Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

This thread just doesn't suffer fools. It's actually pretty democratic.

A thread in which lexel if he puts his mind to it can create more upvoted and down, same with RAC. Even Magness got a couple of posts downvoted to oblivion, when a few of his posts really made absolutely no sense. That's the thread. Hell, even one of the earliest top contributers in shirtboy when he seems to get angry with people gets downvoted.

What people don't have tolerance for is the same thing over and over. Rightly or wrongly that's where we are at. Not wanting to run "easy" has been done to death. A few people survive it, like any training program. We all I'm sure know guys who have ran at near marathon pace every run, forever. But the durability is few and far between and the reason most of us here is we realise what we did before was unsustainable or just too damn hard.

If you have run 40 marathons, I highly doubt you need to be here. I'm sure you'll survive just about anything that most won't. But most people are not like this and the advice and structure this thread provides is a gift of giving us a second chance in running. It of course doesn't apply to everyone. Just likely more people than not.

And in the long run does it give you more stimulus overall? For that single run you will receive greater stimulus but also way more fatigue, so for the next “rolling” 10 days of workouts can you generate the expected stimulus while keeping your fatigue manageable or do you reduce your session load?

This is it and this is why people have gotten so much faster. It's that simple but it's also complicated to excecute as runners come in wanting to keep all the bad habits they have from the past. I was one of them.

I just assumed I could keep the steady long run. You can't. Or I couldn't. There is little room for compromise in NSM. That's it's strong point but I guess a draw back for some. It's balanced to have enough of everything you need to progress, but by doing that and keeping this balance and freshness week to week, you have no real choice to give up steady long runs and high end work, which are the least important things anyway. It's only because they have been overvalued in the past that we panic and think they must remain. It took me a long time to accept this but i cannot argue with my best results in over a decade and I'm 48 now.

This applies to most people. As someone else mentioned, probably not all. But it's a fair point in that it this method appeals, it's probably because something has gone wrong down the line with other methods of training.

My mistake ... The english version isn't a 1 to 1 translation of the Norwegian version.

Bakken claims that it is a bit more in depth than the Norwegian release.

He says that about 50% overlap, but judging from the chapters list, I'd more be guessing 75%

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Oh well .. I don't mind supporting Bakken, so my English version will arrive from Amazon during the week.

The Norwegian is a quite pretty hardcover version with plenty of color.

I assume the English version is a black and white Amazon "print on demand" version like Sirpoc's book ... especially since it's available on all the Amazon platforms on release.

Feels like Bakken is trying to ride on the coat tail of Sirpoc's success by changing the book name in English.

Even shamelessly trying to promote his book on the reddit sub. Massive thumbs down from me.

They are totally different books. NSM by sirpoc is a comprehensive guide on how to apply his training. That is likely the best idea for the majority of hobby runners.

Bakken has written a very comprehensive book, some of it overly complicated and irrelevant to a lot of runners. Or at least will cause people to overthink their training a bit. But, if you are beyond NSM then this will keep you on the narrow. It's main purpose, I assume, is to correct all the misconceptions about doubling that have come up over the years.

My TL;DR is that NSM is an easier read but if you want finer details about muscle tone etc, then Bakken has you covered. Both guys are also very complimentary of each other and while they come to a lot of the same conclusions, how they got their and their backgrounds are grey different.

It would have been amazing if Bakken had asked SirPoc to write the Foreword. :)

Pretty much agree. Sirpoc book is a far easier read for someone who just wants to understand how to apply very good training to a hobby jogger. If you want more than that or even more in depth beyond what you need to worry about, Bakken has you covered. Sirpoc said as much in his own book.

NSM book itself is a bit more relatable to me and i found myself with a few lightbulb moments. It's also written in good humour and that kept me really interested.

There's some stuff in Bakken's book I will come back to at a later date, but where I am in my training a lot of it is down my list of priorities. That doesn't mean they aren't important, but I actually feel as a hobby jogger having too much information can actually be detrimental at times and helps us make bad decisions.

Is this for real? Bakken has used the Norwegian model as a "brand" name for over 20 years on his web site, and Bakken's findings is the indirect reason why this very thread exists in the first place.

As for promoting on the reddit sub, he has also given quite a few good pieces of advice on that sub in the past.

The 2 books are not competing with each other anyway, since they are very different in focus and scope.

I've just started Bakken's book and broadly agree. It's probably too in depth, for most. You already need to know a lot about training to probably make sense of it. That isn't a criticism but it's certainly not a super easy read. I really look forward to getting in depth with some of it and though and into the really fine details. How can we not want to read what Bakken has to say?

The genius of sirpoc is how he can get ideas across in a very simple way. He's as good a communicator as you will find. That's the huge appeal and you could give NSM to a semi keen runner as a book and they wouldn't be overwhelmed, yet there's enough also in there to keep someone who knows the basics interested. This is why his book as sold so well and is so highly rated. I've given copies as gifts to people who can just pick it up, enjoy it and reshape their own training.

They are both guys who clearly have huge respect for each other, but coming at it from different angles. I think sirpoc even said here they have spoken a lot over the past 6 months or so. I would love to have an insight into those conversations. I doubt there is a huge amount they don't agree on, especially having read Bakken's foreword to NSM and him mentioning sirpoc by name in his own book.

These two guys have you covered from 4 hours a week running up to olympic level. There's probably some crossover in the middle. You also can't forget sirpoc really just happened to copy his own training from decades before from another sport, which just happens to line up with broadly the Norwegian method. But sirpoc's book could easily be called "The British time trial method". It's a reminder that all good training ends up looking the same in the end, anyway. I would also add the race pacing section of NSM is probably the best part of any running book I've ever read and they both will uabe pride of place on my bookshelf.

Good points and thanks for the response. I was being a little tongue in cheek. Apart from the long run I've been doing NSM workouts and do feel that they have gotten me in decent shape while avoiding injury -- the letter being hugely important to me now.

If I come out of this cycle with a reasonable performance I may well try the slow long runs.

Not so, exactly. I only read partly the excerpt of Bakkens book, but he defines the threshold at a lower intensity as sirpoc does.

Bakken defines also absolute lactate values 2.3 - 2.8 mM/L as Golden Zone. Quite a nonesense. Lactate levels are not transferable from athlete to athlete, a classic beginner mistake (as often seen here in this forum).

Bakken is obviously not saying this is the perfect zone for everyone. You have misinterpreted. He doesn't need you to tell him what j already knows, that lactate levels are non transferable.

Also, don't forget Bakken's mindset is the golden zone and is influenced somewhat by the knowledge that the ultimate goal is two sessions per day, whereas sirpoc deliberately pushes slightly harder (as discussed in the NSM book) based on the fact we are only doing one session a day and we only need to be recovered 48 hours later.

1. That wasn't the question.

2. It will obviously vary between individuals.

Nor are they very reproducible. In fact, lactate concentrations vary more day-to-day than HR, even when the metabolic demands do not. That's why, e.g., the Dmax method for determining LT was invented.

Sorry, but did you mention your age?

My reason for asking: as we get older, max HR and hence VO2max decline more rapidly than LT. Given that you appear to be a veteran runner, it may very well be that your 80% of max HR is no more strainful than others 70% of max HR.

This, of course, is one of the problems of using max HR as a guide to training intensity, but even more so, being dogmatic about what is supposedly optimal for everyone.

I did but I will say again I'm 70. Interesting I didn't know that about max and LT. Both are just guesses for me anyway. . . . But I am very familiar with long run pacing, know what has worked before (usually 6 20-22 milers at a decent clip), and hesitate to go in 100% on a method that hasn't been adopted by any runner I know.

Then I come on here and get advice about long runs from a 3:28 marathoner -- I mean thanks for the input but unless you are over 60 that's not gonna carry a lot of weight. . . Are there any top US age groupers out there who are getting results with this? (Sorry if they have been mentioned above).

I've had great success. I'm in my early 50s, i guess that isn't that old though.

Not US, but two runners in my running club are in the top 10 in their age groups past 55 and 60 respectively, both ended up last season being ranked inside the top 10 in the UK at various distances, both have been training like this over a year and were nowhere near this level in their age group previously. In fact our whole running club is doing so well in BMAF events it's raised eyebrows. NSM is at the core of most of our improvements.

I posted before, but one of these guys also broke a 3 hour marathon at 62 years old earlier this year, which is the first time going sub 3 since 2011. I believe he has ran at least one marathon a year since 1989, but I will double check that when i speak to him again next year weekend. He posted somewhere in the thread himself, early on but like a lot just drift away.