Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

I'm not a coach and far from the most experienced in this thread, but the average singles session includes about 30 mins of work (e.g. 3 x 10 mins).

I don't think it's wrong to break it out into two sessions, but does it not seem like a massive faff to do a warm up, 15 mins of work, warm down and then get changed. Only to do the same again later in the day?

I mean if time is not a constraint then it could work but then again if time is not a constraint perhaps NSM is not the optimum method anyway?

Fortunately for me time isn't a constraint, and neither is mileage. Thus me not chiming in very much on this thread as I don't follow NSM per se. But that doesn't mean there's aspects of it that can be applied regardless. Which I've certainly done, as I haven't gone anywhere near doubling workouts. But that gets to the reason for my question though, is if there's a middle ground that can be effective, especially for a masters runner where recovery is becoming a priority.

Well I think if you consider any of these workouts individually to be "big", you might be overcooking the intensity.

Coming to this from being a high-volume mileage maniac with lower tolerance for quality sessions, I've found the "middle ground" to be just adding easy doubles. The "Serious Hobbyjogger" method or as I call it "Norwegian Summer of Malmo".

I've been running the schedule from the 7-hour template in the book and adding easy 30-35 min doubles 4-5 days per week. Gets me the volume that I crave while still having lighter workouts. Feel like the 4x10 and 6x6 in the 8+ hour template are still a bit too much for me.

I don't think I'll ever need double threshold.

This is where once you get to the higher end, it's going to be personal choice. For me, adding 30-35 min doubles a day absolutely cooked me. Just couldn't handle it. I don't know if sirpoc is the same, but he did these for a while and they never came back. Others might be able to handle them. I thought I could for a while then I was toast. I ended up like Paul, treading water really.

Biggest change for me was to get a peloton and copy what sirpoc has been doing with low end sub threshold doubles, but with the bike in the AM.

A few others have posted this, but put me also back on the road to new PBs. Running more than once a day just isn't ever going to be an option for me and adding too much easy volume really caused me to stagnate and get a bit toasty. The bike just doesn't seem to offer the same fatigue. I think sirpoc posted a while back it's a "free hit" in terms of not really causing any extra fatigue and I think having done this for 4 months now and making new breakthroughs, i would have to agree with this.

I've modified this for my current marathon training block into a 2Q day plan that includes: a Double Threshold day (AM session is ~25-30 min of Sub-T 1000m or 2000m reps, PM session is 15 min sub-T shorts reps or 10 minutes of hill reps), and a Long Run days with some solid MP blocks in that run.

I commit to running easy the other 4-5 days a week. That gets me quality and also a lot of time on feet those two days. I'm close to 50; I gotta take the day after the Q days super easy, but feel like I am recovering fairly well on the whole. Moving the "speedwork" to Sub-T intensities/durations has me turning the legs over well and not feeling rinsed. I am ready to keep the mileage up and look forward to the quality long run each week. If I feel okay enough to push a midweek easy run up to an easy pace 80 min or so as a MLR, I will; but I don't force that one at all. I haven't done the math on my training load, but I suspect it is still pretty solid - just trading some of the pace load out for more volume since my focus is the longer race.

I concede this is not exactly within the confines or prescription of Vanilla NSA, but since you asked I figured I would share. Also the Marathon was not within regular NSA initially, so I think we're good adapting principles of into our training.

I'll also add for anything outside of Marathon training, I am just sticking to singles. I am just doing the double threshold day now to have a quality day of 12-13 total miles on top of the long run.

I think CTL (as determined by intervals.icu) is vastly overrated.

For one, the inputs aren't exact, so they distort the calculation of load

And secondly, if I zoomed out on the fitness graph I showed in the video, so that it spanned the last 4 years - it would show that my fitness score was astronomonically higher in 2022 (hovering around 85, compared with 50 now), when I was doing a lot of cross training.

And yet, I'm running significantly faster (at least I was) with a fitness score of 49 compared to 85. For reference, PB was 1:22 in the HM in 2022 compared with 1:14 now.

My fitness score consistently dropped all the way up until January of 2025, and yet I consistently improved. The upturn in CTL only started in February of 2025. I had a short period of improvement, but I've regressed since August, despite my CTL being slightly higher now than it was then.

And just to address the people saying that I'm not being patient and that others have gone through a plateau; it's not that I've stopped making progress, it's that I've regressed (by quite a lot).

Once you're at like 36 mins of work per session, it makes sense to split it up, maybe just do a shorter warm-up each time plus no cool downs

I have the US10.5 in both Dynafish (44) and Challenger 5 (44 1/3) and the Dynafish fits perfectly with medium thickness socks, whilst the Challenger is slightly tighter and I need to use thin socks.

Hope that helps.

Should also have mentioned I have the Red Hare Pro 8 in US11 (45) which fits perfectly

The bike really does feel like a ‘free hit’. I did strictly subT bike sessions for a few weeks while rehabbing a minor injury. Coming back to full running my heart rate is super low running :30s/km faster and not feeling stressed at all. Kind of mind blowing from my usual experience of climbing back out of the hole post injury.

You can't add TSS across sports.

Here's an interesting question: is it better to omit other cardio from the intervals icu website? I guess that would probably give a better sense of total running load. But it might be underreporting fatigue.

Ok, well I'll give a different example.

In January of 2022 (before I did any kind of cross-training) my fitness score was 51 and I ran a 5k in 17:46.

Fast forward to November of 2025, my fitness score was 49 and I ran a 5k in 15:47.

The 25% rule works out great...I'm building up to that but it's nice gently easing into NSM.

I ran 320 mins. last week (5 hours and 20 mins).

25% of 320 = 80 minutes, which would theoretically put me at 26 mins. per session (78 mins.).

Started off a bit smaller--I did 30 one day and then 25 two days later (55 mins.). I'll be able to add a third day of 10-15, and as I get more comfortable doing these workouts, I'll ramp that one up to 20-25 mins. to get to 75-80.

Ran them a few weeks ago around 8:xx, based on a corresponding 5k time, and now am in the high 7:xx, trying to actually hold back from going faster (usually 6x5 or 5x6, I could do the 10x3 but hate the higher mechanical load, etc.). That said, my legs feel fresh-I look forward to the EZ runs though mentally, but a day from now I'll be hungry to do NSM again. It really is a simple, yet genius system.

I know in the '80s people said they did "steady running" but not like this, I don't think they would have done something like 3 EZ, 3 ST, 1 LR...they might have had a block of continuous steady, etc. instead (I.e. what would Steve Jones, Bob Hodge,
Toshihiko Seko, Gelindo Bordin, etc. have done with regard to threshold/NSM at the time?).

To those cross training on top of the vanilla NSM. How much time each week are you cross training?

20% or 25% is a nice rule of thumb but it becomes less meaningful at the lower and higher ends of the mileage/time spectrum.

If you're running 5 hours a week then you could potentially handle 3 x 30 mins of SubT as you can easily recover.

If you run 1½ hours a week, you could have 100% SubT runs, no? :D

I agree and it’s the same for me in terms of much higher fitness score with a lot of cross training (quite obviously) not corresponding to faster running races than lower fitness score with lower load but proportionally more running. The point of CTL and fitness score is not to predict performance, but to (with caveats and approximations) track load. It gives you a hint on the progression of your external load.

I’d like to challenge the idea of actual load progression (famous mantra “progress everything”) as the sole driver of improvement. I think that once a certain level relative to one’s genetic ability is reached through sustainable load progression (after several years of consistent training) even a relatively flat load, so a fixed training schedule in terms of hours and workouts, could still slowly bring some improvements in the long term. That’s because although in theory the same workouts relative to one’s threshold yield the same load score, by getting marginally faster the absolute load (a cyclist would refer to kilojoules) is actually higher. Again, it’s the same load if you consider it relative to your threshold, but it’s not the same load in absolute terms. This has probably been discussed earlier but I can’t find the page anymore.