Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Great post mate 👍🏻 maybe I didn't go into the easy stuff as much, but you are right it's super important. I go on 65% of MAS, as the top end. This gives you a pace as a guide. This is basically also around Tinman's calculator "easy" pace. If I run in this, I'll never go above 70% max HR, even with cardiac drift .

This may be trending off the original topic of how to structure training on less mileage but I would be interested to hear from those who have adopted this approach, is it also your experience that pressing up to or exceeding LT when doing longer repeats like 1K+ for, say, 8km of total volume in a session or more leaves you unable to perform more than 1-2 sessions per week for a prolonged period? Where as keeping it just under LT allows for 2-3 sessions per week of 10km or more? I often wonder how much of this is due to mechanical versus bioenergetic impacts/stresses. While physiology has certainly been able to analyze certain parameters and discern biochemically what is taking place, it feels as though we still don't have a "true" understanding of the underlying mechanism. Any thoughts?

Training peaks is the only one that official can use TSS, although golden cheetah did, I don't know if they still do. Strava score is pretty much the same, as well as intervals icu. That has it as fitness score. It's all basically the same calculation and equations Coggan came up with alongside hunter Allen, from memory, .But you must keep your zones updated. Or it's useless, even individualised to you it'll be worthless. This is where I run parkrun every 3-4 weeks as it gives me a chance to update paces, zones etc.

When doing this kind of training would you still have a medium long run between workout days? And would the long run be easy then so you can recover? And on what days would you do strides?

Also thanks to everyone for such a useful thread

Nope, I'm from the Middle East.

Nothing here is original, all structures that plenty of coaches and runners have used before. Coaches like Tinman, Rubio, Wetmore, Hudson us a pretty standard outline as follows:

Sun - Easy w/ strides

Mon - Workout

Tue - Medium Long Run

Wed - Easy w/ strides

Thu - Workout

Fri - Easy

Sat - Long Run

If that's a structure that appeals to you, you can use that template and just make both your workouts threshold sessions. If you're wanting to follow the "Norwegian" outline:

Sun - Easy

Mon - Tempo

Tue - Easy

Wed - Tempo

Thu - Easy

Fri- Repetitions

Sat - Long Run

If in your warm up for the two tempo sessions you do 8*100m strides, that's two sessions of strides there. The repetition workout is essentially a stride workout, so far as pace goes (assuming it is done at approximately 1500m pace) although if the repetitions are longer and/or the total volume is high, the physiological impact can be different than a basic leg speed session.

I think a lot has to do with how you define these different training philosophies. For example, if you just think of the Norwegian System as emphasizing threshold workouts then whether you use the first template or the second, you're training using the Norwegian System. This is nothing new to be honest as runners have been using these outlines for years. I think what gives the Norwegian System it's novelty is 1) the regular utilization and analysis of lactate readings and using lactate values (or efforts) that are lower than the traditional LT as popularized by Daniels and others here in the US as 60 minute race pace or 4.0 mmol and 2) the redundancy in the workouts used. This even goes against some coaches suggestions on never repeating the same workout or always progressing the workout so as to modulate the training load. I personally think consistency over many weeks, say 18-24, and then just repeated for each build-up is better than the really intense workouts that are progressed toward at the end of most runners' training plans in order to illicit a big stimulus and "peak" them. Hope that was helpful and gives you some ideas.

Thank you so much for the detailed response! I’m currently using the first outline you wrote there but thinking of moving to a 3 workout schedule. Something like:

Mon-tempo intervals

tuesday- 75 min medium long run

wed- tempo intervals

thurs- 60 easy

friday - alternating between tempo and repetitions every other week

sat - 90 long run

sun - 60 easy

I will give this a try in my next build up and see how it goes

I literally do the same thing every week.

3 sub threshold sessions (all last about 65 mins with a warm up and down) 3 easy runs of 50 mins and a long run of 75 mins. All are the same pace roughly. 65% of MAS (well current estimated based on my 5k time, but will get you within a few seconds per km of it).

No strides. Nothing. The way I do it is so simple. The only thing I would/ might change is maybe add on 5 mins to the easy days and long run. The only rationale for this is there's a point where I saw Jacobs hobby jogger brother increase volume a bit, the odd extra rep here and there and he kept the overall rough 80/20 ish (more like 75/25) time in zone to the same ratio by then just making the easy days slightly longer. So it slowly moved him up to where I am now (just under 7 a week) to up to around 8 hours on average. For him, 10x1k has slowly become 12 etc. 5x2k has become usually 6.

Shirtboy made a really good point. This is pretty boring. Pretty robotic. But it's by far the best jump in performance I've had after quite a while being around the high 18s. I really have changed nothing else, not weight, time training , literally nothing. Except the make up of the actual training load of the week.

Most definitely! Economize, economize, economize!

Name of the game for us newly minted 'ol timers'! :)

Exactly on point, too -- give yourself room to grow the workouts and extend when you feel ready. THat's about the only lever/variable to play with here. Feeling good or your ready, up the pace slightly/add on an interval at the same pace. Nothing drastic, just fine tune inside the sessions and structure you are already sticking to.

Youll be able to track and make the adjustments so much more easily when youve done the same workout week in week out for 40-50 weeks of the year as well, taking all the periodization guess work out of the equation. You know, the guess work you are allegedly paying a coach to decipher for you!

The TSS you can safely put into the trash.

Why? 60min at 100%FTP = 100 TSS, but also doing 120min at 70%FTP gives also around 100 TSS. That is ridiculous. Everyone with a little bit of brain and understanding knows that this can't be true.

This example falsifies that Trainingpeaks formulas they are off and garbage!

Yeah, on the bike i only really train to HR anyways, not to FTP/Power, just generally interested in the concept.

I really think it depends. In my experience around the sweetspot threshold range, it's very accurate. I also knew from around a decade of data, what CTL I needed to get to, so I could reach a certain power. Once you have years and years of data, it will be very useful to you. But the numbers are only relevant, to one's self. It's also worth noting it's flawed for cycling in the sense that Coggan will tell you that FTP is the power a rider can sustain, for 40km in a Time Trial. Well for me that in my peak was around 47 minutes, well short of an hour. So racking up 100TSS in an hour would be impossible. Also the fact normalised power comes into play.

FWIW I did an experiment in 2016 as I was injured, so couldn't go outside. I just rode like 2.5 hours a day on the turbo, like everyday at around zone 2. It was hard, really hard. You ride 2.5 hours on the turbo in zone 2, every day, you deserve that TSS trust me. One day I noticed after like 5 weeks of literally doing this every day that my CTL was around what it actually was in my normal peak. 2 weeks later I actually rode a 10 mile PB. Probably just over twice the usual volume, at lesser intensity . Richard Bideau won I think the 100 TT champs around that time, he racked up a huge amount of hours doing the same thing, riding his bike in zone 2 and was power PBing at all distances that year.

I think I said before, maybe not here. But for Time Trialling/ triathlon it can be very, very useful data. For road racing cyclists, not so much. Everything I've learned about running seems to suggest that it can be very useful information, to play around with different sessions and see how it plays out. The higher my CTL, the faster my 5k has been. Full circle again, the highest I can get my CTL for the hours I have, is the training I've mentioned in this thread. It's not perfect, but for me it is giving me a very good guide as to what works and what doesn't.

Looking at how Training Peaks calculates rTSS, it reduces to the following:

(1/36)*S*(NGP/FTP)^2

where S is the duration of the run in seconds, NGP is pace adjusted for terrain and altitude, and FTP is one hour race pace (LT pace).

I think some of these metrics and different ways of quantifying training are interesting but, I agree with lexel, they are just mathematical values to assign to what we as runners already know intuitively.

Interestingly, I remembered reading a thread from years ago where Tinman posted the following:

A 3 mile run at 25-30 seconds per mile slower than your 5km pace.
A 6 mile run at 60-70 seconds per mile slower than your 5km race pace.
A 12 mile run at 2-2:30 per mile slower than your 5km race pace.

They are about equal in aerobic stimulus stress on your body, but the 12 mile run is more trauma, impact stress.

If you have an LT pace of 6:00 per mile and compare what Tinman is saying (and what a lot of us know from training experience) to what the rTSS score suggests, running 54 minutes at 6:00 per mile would achieve the same score as running for 96 minutes at 8:00 per mile. That's insane! LOL

I'm glad Friel has been mentioend here, as although his book is old is still the best on HR training on here. You'll get all different rTSS values depending what you use. For those who use the PMC it's incredibly useful, but I think someone mentioned, it doesn't really serve a purpose for anyone but yourself. It tells me more about my body than feel.

I use Friels heart rate TSS, I don't personally find it far off. I train up to and for 10 mile races, as this is probably the limiting distance of TSS for runners. I can get close to 100 on that 10 mile race, roughly an hour. My easy runs are top end of zone 1 HR, to get to 100 TSS I'd have to run 2.5 hours. Id rather do the 10 miler, if fine that easier. So it's swings and roundabouts it can work both ways, as some of the outlier examples others have used. I think it gets complicated with those who are very aerobically trained for long distances.

People are always arguing about the merits of TSS, CTL and the merits of the PMC. Maybe everyone is digging into the weeds a bit too much. In general, I think it must have some use when talking about this model, as in general it seems everyone who has improved in this thread, with or without knowing it would have increased their weekly TSS. So it must have some relevance to the discussion or pattern. I used to post a lot of trainer toad, Coggan argues there as well. He seems a bit of a douchebag? But one thing I agree with him on, people moan about outliers and NP buster sessions that give you 210 TSS for two hours. But his point is actually quite reasonable, why has nobody come up with anything better in 20 years?

Anyway my two cents. Thanks to all the guys / gals posting here. This is probably the first letsrun thread I've ever read from start to finish , where nobody turned into a douche and where I think everyone can take something, no matter how little away from it as good for thought.

Happy running 💪🏾

It is really lol.

We should not take over a matrix value without verifying it. At least with real examples. Its ok sirpoc if it works for you, but i had to mentioned that and i didn't want to attack you, far away from it.

If an artificial intelligence would calculate such a stress value per week, how would it operate? Most likely it would define zones and provide some scale factors to it. The TRIMP or modified TRIMP system tries to do that. Polar uses Trimp since decades. It workes for me and i think it is better than TSS.

What is debatable is, if it is better to do 30min at 95%FTP, or 45min at 90%FTP as an example. Only if you have different scale factors within those intensities you find a solution, otherwise the higher duration provides a higher stress, if the scale factor is the same in this range. Is it ok to have the same scale factor in this area, or should we use the lactate value and scale it??

I think as someone posted pages back, probably it's close , maybe even it's better to do the 30 mins at as close to FTP as you can as a single session in isolation. But 90% of FTP is probably doable 3x a week even for runners no problem, so overall it's going to create better fitness gains. I'm assuming this would be broken into chunks and not straight. Maybe a fairer comparison is if you say 100% of FTP and then 95. Then I don't even think it's a debate. I agree with guy above, basically I think this type of training going back to original discussion, works because simply Ur creating extra load in that sub T area you really pick the benefits up from. It's not hard to necessarily run or ride at FTP or what u want to call it. Ur just limited in how much you can do. 90-95%, not so much. Worse obviously as an isolated session, but over weeks and week u can simply do more.

Pretty easy to do actually with minimal ‘talent’