Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Congrats on PB!

I presume you are a serious UK club runner? With S/T work and your slow easy pace, presumably you are having to do most of your training alone? Is this something that you have found easy to adapt to?

Do you think the ideal conditions yesterday was a big contributor?

You could try it & report back. Kenyans' main workout is a long continuous tempo on hilly dirt roads at altitude, usually at a hard pace.

They do fartleks & hill repeats too but lots of continuous workouts are their bread & butter. Seems to be working for them these last 4 decades.

I had to learn this as well. Now I am able to dial in the effort. It is a state, not a pace! First rep of my 3x9 is usually a little slower. Am able to do it all over again in 48 hours!

Great method to turn the clock back for an older runner like me. It is a fun sport!

I am not on the NSM program, but I had the same question as you. Currently using Vomero 18s ... relatively soft heel counter and lots of good foam. Not a "fast" shoe but fast enough for sub-T work.

The best plated "super trainer" option I can find from research is Puma Deviate Nitro 3. Doctors of Running have a great write-up on it, and have it on their list of shoe recommendations for people with Haglund's:

doctorsofrunning.com

Best Shoes for People with Haglund's Deformity (Shoes without Rigid Heel Counters)

We have compiled a list of recent footwear that either have flexible heel counters, modified heel counters that take pressure off the back of the heel

Open link

Yeah UK club runner (don't know about serious!). In the past I used to go to my club's track sessions but rarely do now, but that is largely because I like getting my run done in the morning. When I do occasionally go to a track session I'll just find someone who is running the session around my sub-t pace and get ~30 minutes of work in. I also semi-regularly do an easy run with a couple of friends and will occasionally do something like 4x3minutes + sub-t parkrun rather than the usual 10x3minutes if I fancy something more social.

But you're right in that this training has the potential to turn you into a bit of a lone wolf.I imagine it might not be that enjoyable for people that love big group sessions and hammering workouts with others.

And although the London conditions were slightly better than last year it still felt hot! It's difficult to argue they weren't good though when two guys broke 2 hours... But I'm pretty confident I am actually fitter than last year regardless as my pacing last year was about as perfect as it could have been, where as this year I rolled the dice a bit more and faded at the end, so think I could have improved my time with better pacing.

The commentary made a thing about how ideal the conditions were, with a small tailwind and low temperatures. But, I am now hearing reports from a lot of others saying it was actually hot.

I'm of the opinion that any shoe is fine for ST work. If you want different/more shoes that's fine, but I don't think anyone needs to get a separate shoe for work at those paces.

I have bilateral Haglund's and a small AT tear on one leg. Maybe mine are smaller than others, but I never noticed a difference either improvement or aggravation with type of footwear. Of the 7 or so shoes I've ran in the last two years, the only shoe that bothered me at all was Kiprun KD900 Light, and that was more lateral foot pain, nothing to do with my lower leg issues.

Strange delete. Maybe it was a troll posting. But appears there isn't a runner who ran 2:28 at London last year and then a 2:25 this as they pointed out 🤔🤔

Are people just taking us for a ride?

I find it hard to believe even sirpoc trained the way he "claims" he did for 2:24. My guess has always been there were other double sessions we were not privvy to. The same with cheetodust and how his "claims" about the not doing anything specific for the mile.

I assume this is a troll post so am replying so no one else has to. It is pretty easy to find who finish in 2:28 last year and 2:25 this year. More than one person did it.

Also, has anyone ever carried out secret training to fool some random strangers on the internet? Like, ever???

I actually now checked the mass start results from this year against last year. Positions 70 (2:24:40) to 90 (2:26:10) on the 2026 list. 18 runners from GBR in that range. There are up to 7 runners that could match the description of a 2-3 minute improvement, depending on how people round off times.

Almost ALL runners in that result range who also participated last year made a better time this year, which was possibly caused by the bad weather last year. There are also 3 runners in that range who make much greater leaps than 2-3 minutes between the years. One made a leap of exactly 10:00 minutes.

The obsession from some to discredit hobby jogger's results in this thread is a very strange thing tbh.

It’s very easy why they do it as this method “attacks” their way of life/core beliefs. We all have things ingrained in life that we will die on the hill for and self worth and core identity is one of them.

For someone who’s life outside of work or family is running and they have been programmed for many years, saying follow Daniels, and you come along saying you have a better way where you can do less and achieve more, they won’t believe you, then you demonstrate it, and they will jump through mental gymnastics to prove otherwise, it’s one person, it’s lies, speeeed work, it doesn’t work fake news, etc just because it’s seems an attack on their way of life and they will double down - why the thread is called a cult by these same people.

you see the same thing play out with religion, politics, flat earth, and many other topics, like be it for us UK folk.

And yet the messiah held up on these boards for double threshold, trains using the same principles and it’s ok for him but hobby joggers no, it’s wrong for you and you shouldn’t have a method that gets you to us serious runners and use (insert method here, cough Daniels cough)

threshold training is here to stay, it’s what will get you fit and no need to go to the well or super high mileage as it’s about managing your total load, being able to recover and adapt to it.

i could argue that super high mileage stumbled on load but that a different argument for a different time.

Tbh, this was me when I first came to this thread. Dismissal at it as silly, mainly because it was so alien to my background in training and that there's no possible way that what was laid out by a random poster on the internet could be better than what I had done for many, many years. Or all the training I have had drilled into me over the years.

Obviously I was really wrong, not just about the training, but that sirpoc was just a random speculative poster on the internet. Clearly knew his stuff from day one and has helped change things for a lot of people and this is firmly here to stay as now becoming more widely accepted as not only a legitimate way to train, but one grounded in science and phisiology.

But I can still see why it challenges people's core beliefs and puts people's nose out of joint.

He maybe didn’t want to be identified, once he realised that people would go looking at the results.

New FODcast with Sirpoc just dropped, looking forward to getting stuck into this one!