Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

stupid. no, are you stupid or idiot, or maybe both. have you opened a lydiard book.
Running to the Top, Arthur Lydiard. Page 87.

Fun Run Schedule for Beginners
For Six Weeks
Monday : Jog 15/30 Minutes
Tuesday: Jog 30/60 Minutes
Wednesday Jog 15/45 Minutes
Thursday: Jog 30/45 Minutes
Friday: Rest or jog 30 minutes
Saturday: Jog 15/45 minutes
Sunday: Jog 30/60 Minutes

For Four Weeks
Monday : Relaxed striding 100 by 4/6 times
Tuesday: Jog 30/60 Minutes
Wednesday Time trial 3000 metres
Thursday: Jog 30/60 Minutes
Friday: Rest or jog 30 minutes
Saturday: Time trial 5000 metres
Sunday: Jog 45/75 Minutes

his time trial definition is 7 out of 8 RPE (87.5%) this is not threshold (pg 84). this is recipe for burn out. this is no different than easy hard philosophy. no different than racing tempos. you tell me if you have done a time trial and held back. you will not improve long term. idiot. stupid idiot sandwich. please put bread between your face cheeks and call yourself idiot sandwich

worse yet are repetitions for established intermediate or advanced runners. all anaerobic capacity development. "Run One and Jog One" pg 83. you tell me 3x 1600 metres or 6x 800 metres at vo2, for multiple weeks on end how you can continue to improve. you will stagnate like daniels, maybe walk backwards on your arse. only difference is higher overall mileage so higher baseline to work off of. but at the elite level its no different between programs. there's a reason why college and pro programs switch to threshold for long term development. idiot sandwich.

From 19min to 15min (3:48/km to 3:00/km) it was about monthly 1.3s per km progression, if it was done in 36months.

You have totally rolled back on what was a pretty bizarre attack and conspiracy.

But I can confirm as I've posted many times this has come up (hey I even bothered to register now) for a good couple of years I used to beat sirpoc at parkrun.

In fact, Strava snoop is missing a race that isn't on power of 10, even later than he said (it turned out of wasn't the full 5k so got removed) in early 2023, where he still ran 18 something. I know this, as we were both in the same race.

As far as I know every run is on there for around the time he first posted on Letsrun. Or at least when people became interested because he was making quite good progress suddenly. The rest we can determine from race results that we know and the fact he has said many times he just trained using Daniels book. So, as someone else pointed out, if I was him why even bother going it the trouble to satisfy one person. We all know how Daniels weeks look, for the most part.

You will and can I'm sure find other folks on the south coast of England who can find their own parkruns from around late 2021 and very early 2023 and you will find sirpoc hovering in the 18s the entire time. That's a very good time and what I would actually expect from inconsistent cycles of training after taking up the sport and quite quickly getting to around that level and then hitting a plateau.

Believe me, there are people training like this with almost far more unbelievable progress. Again, all of it is verifiable through results. some of these people have been running close to a decade and suddenly have improved dramatically.

For myself, I don't think my training was that bad before. So my improvement has been decent but not spectacular on NSM. But there are others whose training was so bad, they had left minutes on the table in 5ks through sheer constant burnout, injury and inconsistency.

And that's exactly why NSM sucks, it takes too much time and probably a lot of weight loss. Join a running club and you're gonna get from 19 to 15 in a year.

But then where all all those M40 runners from all the clubs? Aren't they racing or what?

If I were sirpoc, I would delete my Strava in case Mango comes and turns up at his house. I'm only half joking. For real, some weirdos on here.

But I did have another thought. Is NSM more advanced than given credit for? Being too basic seems to be a lot of the initial criticism, near the threads' start.

I got quite good on speed, throughout my running life. But have now gotten a decent amount better, without it. Sirpoc and many others seem to have got good on Daniels, with some intensity, but then stalled. But then actually got significantly better on NSM.

Is just running sub threshold, but controlling intensity, ramp etc and all the other variables a lot more carefully than some textbook training plans, more advanced than we realise? Yes it's just sort of a never ending base phase, but once you peel back the onion there are actually quite a lot of layers to how you maximise that.

Just about everyone agrees that this training is producing some fantastic results, but maybe it's also the way it's laid out, mapped and not quite as basic as it appears to the eye.

Hi all,
long time lurker here. I’ve discovered the forum about half a year back. After reading through the 10k+ posts I thought: might as well give it a try and in a later stadium add my experiences.

Background
Over the past few years, I’ve been a very effective boom-and-buster. I have been running on and off for over 7 years, usually running about 6 months of the year, taking the rest off due to injury or burn-out. Looking back I’ve averaged about 20km/week/year since 2021. With peaks around 70km/week during marathon build-up and absolute lows where I wouldn’t run for weeks on end. Furthermore, usually I’d run my easy runs around 150 bpm (HrMAX = 187) and beat myself up at the track weekly whenever I wasn’t injured. Had a lot of fun, and some linear progress. Since 2022 I started cross-training with cycling and swimming for a total of 6 hours, that increased to 8 hours in 2025.

Some PRs from recent years:
2022: FM 3:00, HM 1:24, 10k 37:xx, 5k 17:40
2023: FM 2:56, HM 1:21, 10k 36:30, 5k 17:10
2024: HM 1:20, 10k 35:30, 5k 17:04
2025: 5k 16:48 (March), 10k 35:30 (October)

Through this I’ve gotten seriously injured every half year, peaking in 2025 where I
made quite a jump in my 5k time in March, but now had structural nags and pains
during the rest of the year.

NSM
Stumbled upon NSM in September, started reading the forum and figured I’d give it a go. Decided to take 25k/week as a starting point and take my time building up from 3 to 4
times a week. I ran only easy (now being <130 HR for me). Which was incredibly slow, starting around 6:00 min/km. Took a while to get used to. Collected a lot of street credit by chatting with the elderly who I was now running along with. Quite relaxing. End of October ran a 10k race as a starting point in 35:30.

In November I started adding sub-treshold intervals, as I had now reached 5 weekly runs in
a sustainable manner. Built it up by a few minutes each week, reaching about 45-50 minutes over three sessions in January. In the meantime my easy pace dropped from 6:00 in October, to 5:50 in November, to 5:45 in December, and a big jump to 5:30 in January.

Last weekend I ran a 34:09 10k, on the same race where I ran the 35:30 in 2025. Felt quite easy, never even came near those paces during training. Yet still, big PR. And no injury. Very happy with this result as it didn’t feel like a peak performance at all. I’m intending to stick to 5 times a week as that is sustainable for me, not going to build above 25% of volume for sub-treshold. Going to try a 5k in a month or two.

In my opinion the biggest success is consecutively running 50k weeks for several months now, without injury or feeling burnt out. I have never done that before and am enjoying it thoroughly. I realize that I’m only applying a stripped down version of vanilla NSM for
cross-training, plus I’ve only been doing it for a very brief period of time relative to others. However my experience doing this is so much more positive than any other running method so far that it doesn’t feel premature to share a good result in this stadium.

Anyways, will post another update when I do that 5k some time in the future.

Kind regards

The implementation of it is simple but that doesn’t mean it is a basic system.

I actually think NSM does a very good job of bridging the gap between the serious hobby jogger and sub elite type runner who is running 120-160km a week.
NSM is a gateway into that higher mileage type training as it provides a very solid base to progress from. Even guys like FOD runner and A Serious Hobby Jogger who were doing that higher mileage have found a way to incorporate NSM into their training with good results.

As popular as NSM has become within this niche circle, I’m not sure this system will ever be that popular with the general public. Most people are not going to want to run 6-7 days a week to get the most out of this system.
You could probably modify it to 5 days a week but not sure how effective 4 days will be.

I think we will eventually see the basic principles like not totally rinsing yourself in sessions and keeping your easy days truly easy filter down.

>It's all just lydiard

>Proceeds to list all the ways it differs from lydiard

this f king site man

Ok the guy who said "it's just lydiard" is an idiot but you also need to catch a grip and give lydiard the respect he deserves.

I went from 5 days cramming in everything , to NSM and no days off. Undoubtedly 7 feels better, spreading out the week. But, I think a lot of the general public will be convinced you have to have 1-2 days off a week. For most hobby joggers, that's running lore.

After NSM I've changed my views on this.

Maybe you're just living in a poor area, man? Go to Battersea, lots of 15:XX runners there every week.

here are his parkrun stats. all out there in the public domain, babe

https://www.parkrun.org.uk/parkrunner/7086372/all/

Hi, first I must say you are talented much more than the average ! To run those times on that relatively little volume you did is very impressing. And you aren't doing the original version of NSM.The easy runs you told to be at around 150 heartrate were way to fast with a mhr 187. Then when I check your progression there is one thing that strikes me. Your 10 k times are always ' worse' relatively to your 5 k times!

Now when you did 34:09 at 10 k your next 5 k should be in the ballpark of sub 16:30 to be equivalent. Wish you all the best.

Comments like this are why LRC has so bad reputation. Why must you call people to be stupid and idiots to comment with your arguments you think the other person is wrong ? Can we just have a civilized discussion here ?

That are only the ones he ran und er his own name though.

OK, he ran 18 or 19 or whatever. I never argued that he wasn't running whatever time. I keep repeating myself but everybody is determined to defend him and he doesn't need your help.

I believe his training was very poor before NSM. The story that he was stuck at 19 minutes without context doesn't help. You yourself on a prior post said his training was inconsistent. You made almost this exact post before registering. Go look at it :)

Do you think there is a difference between being stuck at 19 minutes vs training little and not being able to break through 19 minutes? Do you think it might help to see his inconsistent training so we can measure the impact of NSM?

This thread is cult like. No doubt or questions allowed. I don't idolize anybody and as much as I like Sirpoc's NSM, I don't idolize him. This is reminding me of MAF threads on Reddit.

I think Sirpoc would like to gracefully exit this thread but that would be difficult.
I assume it is difficult for him to read some of the posts.

It has turned nasty and fanatical Sirpoc advocates (many and not all) are destroying any conversation. You either buy in 100% or you get treated like the post you commented on.