Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Because there is essentially zero rationale for such mixing-and-matching.

I'm not saying you are wrong, maybe there is being over cautious here. But the pattern seems to be the guys with the most patience and build up volume slowly, tend to be having the best results. It's pretty clear that's the case.

The great thing about the Strava group and here in particular is shared experiences. Almost always, near the top of the list of mistakes folks make is seeing some good improvement, so just keeping on going and adding way too much, too quickly.

People may well remember my posts from a while back and I fell into this trap on Strava, even though others warned against it I didn't listen as my view was in improving fast ans wanted to put thr hammer down and get as much as i could quickly. Obviously just ramped up too fast, in line with traditional methods and got beat up and injured like normal. It's a story as old as time, unfortunately. The key to this training in my view and why it works so well is it keeps you healthy as much as you can possibly expect for running, but the downside to that is the ramp rate is miniscule.

I went back to square one and starting again, took a lot longer but I'm healthy, faster and held my patience.

That isn't to say btw that you should do this. But, you are significantly increasing the risk of running into problems that training like this is designed to avoid. It definitely does avoid that, which again is why it works, but it doesn't work as quickly as some woild like.

Even guys who are maybe running out of room to improve, if you said to them where they could have got to on this kind of training, for the majority it is probably far beyond what they could have hoped for, even if it did take a while to get there.

Someone smelled that the thread was going a little too well. Time to start with this useless BS again

This is spot on. It's a gateway to doubles. It's not to replace it. But the point being, 90% (probably more) of hobby joggers will never even get near the volume needed to double. This thread is probably a disproportionate representation of runners, or those obsessing over training. That's not a criticism, that is me and probably anyone else logging onto a forum whose design belongs in 1999.

Paul for example is running into problems the average person and viewer of his is likely never to encounter. Because nobody is running that kind of volume outside of a dozen or so guys in every few hundred in hobby jogging races. Again, not a direct criticism, but just about nobody picking up a copy of the amazing book is going to have a situation where the problem could be that they have ran so much they have cooked themselves, which is obviously an option with Paul given a hell of a lot of volume.

Out of curiosity how fast was the ramp when you ramped too fast and how fast was it when it wasn’t too fast? It looks like Sirpoc’s was an hour of easy running a year, so like 50 tss a year. This is super confusing to me and I’m lost.

Just providing the gospel truth.

Thanks for the message and I'm happy to help. Are you from Portsmouth? I've since moved to Dorset, but am still relatively local! Coming from a long course triathlon background and having trained 'a lot' to get to 5 x Kona qualifications, I was coming into this with a background of a lot of volume (aiming for ~1,000 TSS a week).

I turned 40 last year and, with work, family, life commitments, decided to try and run some decent masters times—as running takes a lot less time than triathlon if you want to be competitive. Prior to 2025 I would typically be in the boom or bust cycle of battling niggles and not being as consistent as I'd like.

I've ran PBs at all distances from the mile to the marathon this past year, following a version of the NSM, but I have doubled plenty of easy days and also tend to increase the easy volume to ensure the balance of easy is appropriate as I scale towards the marathon. Peak week was 90 miles.

For context, I ran a 2:37 in 2017 at London Marathon prior to carbon plated shoes. I used a plan by Steve Way. It worked well, but the two big days a week and aims of 100 mpw were much more risky. I was also 32 at the time and now 8 years on, to have run 2:34 at Valencia and 2:32 at Seville, shows the training is working, as whilst the shoes are undoubtedly worth a minute or two, I'm battling age and will be 41 this year. I feel the trend will continue as I'm aiming to run 2:29 or faster this year at London or Berlin.

I use Intervals.icu and hit a fitness score of 78 before Valencia and 76 before Seville, but have seen a gradual improvement in my threshold pace. I haven't really done any speedwork outside of strides before sessions and the odd race for a hard VO2 stimulus.

I think the consistent load and spreading the load is the key. I never felt totally fried in the build up and certainly didn't need a 3 week taper. I would have no concerns training like this for another marathon and just gradually adding a little more load here and there to nudge up the fitness to another level.

Not really, other than to say everyone including soccer mom just starting out running needs a fully bespoke coaching programme with individually for everything training related otherwise soccer mom won’t improve, oh I almost forgot the need to study physics so you can tell everyone who power works by using the work over time formula.

im looking for more pearls of wisdom for our resident experts who is the saviour to coaching and training

I agree with the general idea that people are overrating CTL/Fitness.

I like TSS/Load theory in general, but as people have kind of mentioned, it isn't that different from tracking mileage. They are both effectively measuring work time * intensity, TSS is just normalized to FTP and exponentially weights the intensity whereas mileage is just time * speed.

Regardless of how you want to quantify load (either TSS or mileage), the biggest thing is:
- You need a certain amount of "load" for maintenance, and some greater amount to improve;
- Doing more than the minimum amount required to improve will help you improve faster;
- Until you are doing more than you can recover from.

So, again others have said this, as long as you are still progressing you do not need to do more to keep improving. When your performance plateaus, that means your current load = your maintenance load and so will then need to increase load to a point where you will improve more.

Also, if you are looking to maximize the "load" or "area under the curve", sweet spot makes perfect sense. Moderate*moderate will always maximize the area under the curve (same as how a square maximizes the area of a rectangle). Sure, there is some nuance to TSS due to the exponential weighting, but the principal is the same. It is the most efficient option (though that doesn't mean it is the best option for you, but given limited time is often the best place for the hobby athlete)

I do agree that CTL/Fitness can be a trap since higher doesn't equal faster, though it can mean that you could be improving faster (but that also depends on the context of your training, obviously). In other words, it is a measure of training volume and not a measure of performance.

Side note, XSS/Strain score is another interesting metric. For example:
Standard Sub-threshold workout TSS: 60-70, SS: 80-90
10km Race TSS: 81, SS: 500

So it really rates the impact of racing (aka "going to the well" or "emptying the tank"), and probably would similarly rate the impact of very hard workouts (aka V02max workouts) though I haven't done any of those recently for obvious reasons.

Don't disagree with any of that. I don't think most people will. I just finished the book and I think it more or less comes to the same conclusion as you, it's useful but actually isn't the whole picture, especially for elites who have all gone past the point load matters, that are scrambling around for the last crumbs.

But generally a guy running 4 hours a week, will improve on 6. If you can run that 6 and spread load into the sweet spot range, you will probably improve even more. They key is staying fresh, healthy and consistent I think probably just about everyone agrees is the strong point of NSM?

Tracking load just provides an opportunity to measure progress against your previous self. So generally, for most people reading this, provided they stay healthy volume will probably equal better performance.

Strain score is quite ridiculous, but I have only used it in cycling. But, for that, it extremely overestimates the impact of racing. It's definitely another metric, just I don't think provides as much use. Can only speak for me.

But good post. Some great posts in the last 3-4 days. Keep them coming. This is what the thread is all about.

Can anybody tell me how to only include running activities on the intervials.icu website?

I spent the better part of an hour trying to figure it out before giving up. Thanks

Not sure how to exclude cycling, but I know in your "Settings", if you scroll down there is a table for other activities and you can change how much they impact your fitness and fatigue (0%-100%).

WTF does my pointing out that you shouldn't mix-and-match inputs to the PMC have to do with anything that you wrote??

Thanks a ton

Especially since distance runners don't vary their intensity nearly as much as most cyclists do.

Of course, the other, bigger issue is that TSS wasn't intended to be a predictor of fitness or performance in the first place.

I guess if all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail?

Can't really disagree with what you are saying. I think Strain Score is meant to measure how systemically fatiguing a workout/race is and not how beneficial it is.

As another example, a 5km Race is TSS of ~40, which is about the same as an easy run, and less than a workout. Which is likely accurate for the benefit it provides my aerobic development. But by TSS as a measure of fatigue, I could do an all out 5km race almost every day and that is the same load as doing easy runs every day. But that is obviously stupid and anyone would burn out and die REALLY quickly trying that.

Strain Score of a 5km race for me is ~200, so almost 4x as costly as an easy run. Which I think makes a lot more sense than saying a 5km race is equally as fatiguing as 50min easy (and a 10km race is more than 2x as costly as a 5km, which again makes sense to me).

So depending on how you look at it I think it may have some utility but agreed that it probably isn't as useful as TSS.

And about progression, I agreed that if you have more time then spending more time on the activity will almost always be better (assuming you can recover) than doing less. It is when you run out of time and have maybe plateaued that I think people should really look at ways to optimize that time.

Side note, but when talking about efficiency I think there is also something to dose frequency. For example, if moving from 4hrs vs 6hrs a week of training then 6hrs will always be better than 4hrs, but I would guess that 1hr * 6 days is a better distribution than 1.5hr*4 days. I think that is also part of why doubling is so effective. You generate more load, but you are also dosing a lot more frequently and I do think that helpful (though likely on the margins; I think the total increase in load is still the primary driver)

You should look at another low volume method produce fast improvement. The Dancan by JS wizard.

The bike vo2 session was a suggestion from sirpoc. I dearly miss letting it wide open on the track, but all knowing it always came with baggage. The workout you might have seen was 10 x 1min on 1 min float at 150% ftp float 90% , real gas out workout. Definitely scratched that itch I’ve had for awhile. I recovered off it nicely, similar to other bike sessions.

To the other comments, I really feel like I’m not realistically capable of tolerating double runs from an injury perspective. I just use a peloton bike and check my brain out, and just aim for a certain Watt range. I did vanilla method for 2 years straight with no real big breaks and only then did I suspect I was plateaued. I think the bike is really manageable and can fit in my life schedule as a double on subT days. At 44, someday I’ll have to negotiate getting faster vs slowing decline, in measuring success. I still love racing and this allows me to maximize that aspect. I don’t track ctl, it’s there but I really don’t use it, other than knowing I’m doing the same thing over and over again. If I had done this in my prime, not sure I would have been willing to train this way, would have helped for sure but I would have needed to shed my ego. Today it works great.

Absolutely I agree with that.If impatient and don't want to hope and wait for an improvement that never might happen it's better to go with a system that always deliver guaranteed fast sustained improvement.