Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Cardio fitness is an easy jump off point. It's useful to use, for someone who just has a watch, a pair of shoes and a heart rate monitor.

Here, in the real world, just about everyone knows in this thread if they go out and run at 70% of max HR, it not only feels easier but the next day will feel easier, compared to 80%.

Sure, % of max probably actually isn't the most scientific. But it's more practical for the everyday runner and a simple marker that can be understood but just about all of us and can control intensity.

This is where your posts are of zero value, to anyone. Genuinely, you are wasting your time and breath looking for someone to say "oh what a smart guy he is!" When you have provided zero and I really do mean zero, of practical real world use to anyone. Which is what this entire thread is about at heart.

Albeit not US master but M50 podium runner in other country. Modified subLT training not strict NSM,but from 3000m indoors (9:4x) to HM road the performance(1:18-1:17:xx) is enough for my age bracket top three place.
I do not run marathons. Long run is short 90-100min <70% HR.

You write quite some unreflected nonsense.

Of course Bakken was using his lactate experience decades long to claim an 'optimal lactate range' for others. Of course he was not aware that it is not transferable to other athletes. And even more severe, lactate levels must be seen in respect to not only intensity but also duration. Because between turnpoint 1 (TP1) and TP2 nothing is stable over time. Neither HR, nor lactate, it is a continuum and a matter of time when you blow up. Therefore we can not discuss about a 'Golden Intensity zone' without mentioning a duration. And this duration depends ...

The argument to read Sirpocs book to understand Bakken is also strange.

Hello good people, a request for advice if I may. I recently ran a half marathon and my average HR from the last hour was 172bpm. Would this be a good indication of lthr? It was a good strong race effort. Thanks in advance.

What's that saying? Oh yeah:

You can lead a horse's ass to water, but you can't make him think.

Not only some of the worst posts in this thread, you also post some of the worst analogies known to man. To say you are stupid is an insult to stupid people. You are the worst kind of stupid, you don't realise it.

There's a chance you are Coggan based on the structure of your posts or the analogies you use. Or you want us to think you are. But I do find it unlikely that's you. Besides, Coggan was previously here and wasn't hiding behind a username. He likes people to know it's him, usually.

Thanks for this response to my inquiry. I must say the lack of ANY response from US runners is concerning. Is there no one out there who is, or who knows, a top age grouper who follows NSM?
Doesn't have to be a superstar but how about someone who podiums at regional marathons, finishes top 10 NYC or Boston, something like that?

You've been given plenty of examples, in the space of 24 hours. Why do they have to be Americans? You got some fantastic responses and people took the time to reply to you. I have no idea why because these aren't American that this is a concern. What a strange comment.

Not the marathon but cheetodust posts here and must be in the top 10 at least of masters runners in his age group from the mile to 5k and it will make you happy to know he's a yank.

I know a runner who is top age 50+ grouper in his country, but he is British and is coached by the wizard.

What is his name?

Coggan gave it away ... his cover is blown

The old article from 2000, where Bakken describes how he examined the lactate on Kenyan runners to find out how to train himself. This article also tells the runners/trainers to go to a lab to find out their personal threshold values. In that article he also states the duration of the work, durations which aligns pretty well with NSM.

Of course Bakken is aware that every runner has slightly different lactate levels for the threshold. To imply that he as a MD and lactate-obsessed elite runner doesn't know that is just silly. But it's not that you'll find a runner with a LT2 of 6 mmol. So the range he provides is a useful and safe range that can be easily used without a lab, and it's good enough for the context. This is not like Blummenfelt/Iden lactate elite training, where they need to nail EXACTLY a specific mmol value on each session.

My twin sister Lindsay Skinner must be in the top 5 for her age for her PB's this year, shes 43 next week:

Park run - 16.55

10k - 34.23 (Dewsbury 10k)

Half marathon - 76.44 (Brass Monkey half)

She has been doing this training since August 2025, UK based.

Based on this reply I suspect that a system developed by Norwegians and refined for the hobby jogger by an Englishman simply is not patriotic enough to get invested for the average US runner?

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Or maybe the average older US runner peaked in life as a high school athlete and can't let go of how things used to be .. You know .. Whether they were Once a Runner or scored four touchdowns in a single game for the Polk High School Panthers in the 1966 city championship

I know a runner who was coached by the wizard, got him injured multple times, left him, and now coached by a ordinary club coach and got even faster.

And now is top age grouper

Thanks for this. Sounds like we’re in a similar situation. I retested my FTP yesterday and ends up it’s 25 watts higher than 3 months ago. This probably is why my LTHR on the bike wasn’t aligning for my workouts.

This has surely been discussed, but I've been through about 100 pages of this thread and I haven't seen it yet --

if the idea is to get more moderately hard running in by keeping the workouts in the "sub-t" mmol range, and sirpoc and others are able to get to around 75/25 split or 70/30 split of easy to hard, what's the wisdom in not doing more marathon pace work (should we call it "sub-sub threshold"?) and pushing that to 65/35 or 60/40?

A few people here have experimented with it (marathon pace 5 days per week or something like that), and they seem to have decided that they gradually got a bit toasted.

I think this is a place where Bakken's muscle tone theories play a role. The marathon pace work doesn't elevate muscle tone as much as faster work, but does so to some extent. Eventually the muscle tone becomes chronically elevated as there's just not enough recovery built in to the program to reset to optimal muscle tone.

This is just a rough guess based on reading this thread, plus the books by Copeland and Bakken. I haven't experimented with that myself.