Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

There are at least 3 big ones the past years, comparing Marathon race times to training data. The 119,000 Strava user dataset, The Boston Marathon Race Performance study, and the study on 6,771 Marathon finishers with fitness app data. All concluded that volume was the main predictor of Marathon race pace, and that it was mainly the easy pace volume that was different.

And then you have the Marathon world records: Sawe trained more volume than Kipchoge. And Kiptum had an even higher volume (Kiptum was much younger than Sawe/Kipchoge when he beat the world record).

If someone was going to just focus solely on cycling for awhile, would this NSM weekly structure be best still, just with increased durations? More like

3 Subthreshold(Sweetspot)- but could all be 3x15min or longer?
3 easy- would you still need to keep to Zone 1?
1 long easy ride- 90min long run can probably become 3hr+?

Not knowledgeable enough on on cycling to find a similar structure, maybe there's a better plan but could be good to keep it similar to eventually transition back/mix

Yeah and people were considerably weaker back then than they are now and today it seems everyone is doing quite a bit of intensity most of the year (or whole year round).

I am not sure how far in the past are you talking either. Armstrong and others were doing 2 hard days - 1 easy day schedule and those hard days had multiple hours of threshold/subthreshold work combined.

I think focusing on proportions is wrong. There is only so much intensity you can do and people at pro level are already doing that so they fill the rest with easy because its still beneficial. Of course the more hours you do the more <LT1 volume you will have because that's the only thing you can add.

Someone doing 25 hours a week will have 20-22 hours of easy in there because it's not sustainable otherwise. It doesn't mean amateurs training 12 hours should do the same proportions.

You can see it in runners. According to published schedules Ingebrigsten was doing 13-14 sessions per week out of which 5 were sub-threshold (or sometimes higher intensity). Timewise it was maybe 10-11 hours total with 2.5 hours of intensity. His easy running isn't as easy either (about 70-74% of threshold translating paces to power).

The less volume the bigger % of intensity there should be. It's because total intensity volume is the limiter.

Isn't he known for doing crazy (at least for his time) volume of sweet-spot+ training?

Of course volume is the main predictor because people who don't get injured and who already maximize intensity do more volume. That volume is the main predictor doesn't mean you can substitute intensity with it and expect the same results.

They are already maximizing tempo/sub-threshold work so all they can add is easy. It doesn't mean exchanging intensity to easy helps. It just means more is more.

Sawe doesn't do that much easy running either. According to info I have found his morning 20km sessions on "easy" days aren't so easy.

Any metric that somehow counts volume is useful as long as you are already doing the intensity you can do. It doesn't mean though that you can hope to get the same result by trading intensity for more volume as then the flaw of the metric is going to be exposed.

I was listening to the Fodcast/Poccast and they were discussing people having a lot of success with 2 (SubT) & 3 easy/long. I'm a typical injury prone but reasonable, 17.30 5k older runner. I tried the vanilla for a month or so but just couldn't recovery quick enough between sessions even if I just do a light jog on the easy days despite conservative sub T for the efforts. Always done low volume with some harder stuff.

The 3 and 2 approach mentioned seems like a good compromise to potentially break the injury cycle.

Any suggestions on how best to structure this within a week. Is it better to have the rest days before the session days or after the session days? Or does it not matter? And session choice 3 x 10 and short 10 x 3 the best bet, or rotate the 6 mins in?

Thanks, and sorry if this has been covered many times already, the thread is so long and search is rubbish.

Not really disagreeing overall but thought it was interesting as a contrast that Kejelcha was 'only' doing 120-140km per week, but likely a lot more intensity.

Noted - thanks for the correction, I had been misled.

Sorry yes accidentally sent my reply, but for anyone else- Kejelcha was training 140km/wk for the track but increased it to 200km/wk to train for the marathon

The original question (in message 12560) was about doing sub-LT2 without lactate meter or HR monitor, so the LTHR suggestion isn't that helpful in that context.

Also, HR is not a very good proxy for lactate. Just look at figure 1.6 in Sirpoc's book where one HR value could span across more than 1 mmol of lactate for him. That's a huge difference.

Similarly, speed is not a good option for example in a city environment where tall buildings distorts the GPS signals.

The approach to triangulate across different kinds of metrics seems like a wise thing to do.

And NSM doesn't work for anyone, for whatever reasons. It works for a lot of people, but there has been many posts here, on Strava, and on Reddit from people who didn't improve. My own guess is that most of these runners use a proxy method that doesn't match the lactate levels they assume they have.

I'm in the same boat as Colin Robinson re: not using a heart rate monitor. I just do a single manual check of HR at the end of my last rep. Maybe we're old school, but I think there's something valuable to be gained by dialing in the feeling of sub-threshold running, and being immediately confident about knowing how the 3-min effort compares to the effort for 6- and 10-mins. This "feeling" is especially helpful when applied to the first mile or two of a race, in terms of managing effort on uneven terrain and not going out too fast.

I do have the advantage of doing most of my workouts on the track, so I typically know right away if I'm overcooking a workout simply by keeping an eye on my pace and paying close attention to the effort. (That said, if my reps are suddenly 4 secs/km faster at the same perceived effort as the previous week, I'll just trust in the new pace. Every month or so this seems to happen, although I'm anticipating that the gains will slow somewhat soon.) I'm 23 weeks into vanilla NSM, and have raced four 10Ks as benchmarks dating back to October 2025, six weeks before I started NSM. The big picture is that my race pace has dropped 27 seconds/km over the past 29 weeks. I haven't missed a day of running and my legs feel great. Currently doing 80 mins of sub-threshold & 6 total hours running per week.

On a semi-related note, I'm finding that incorporating hills into my easy days (walking up the steeper sections, and moderating my effort on shallower inclines) seems to be all that I need to prep for running hilly races, which is a nice surprise. The goal on an easy day, after all, is to keep your heart rate as stable as possible, and this seems like a transferrable skill to racing, where you're looking to avoid going batsh*t until the last mile or so.

Perhaps I would be seeing even bigger gains if I embraced more technology, but for me running is more fun when I'm practicing the "feeling" of it and feeling less like a lab rat.

Well my idea of a thing that "couldn't be simpler" doesn't include having to own a watch and a HR, let alone carry them on a run. It also doesn't need any correction for slope or wind. In short, my idea of "couldn't be simpler" might be closer to respiration rate or talk test than it is to HR and paces. To each his own I guess.

Nsm structure is pretty good for time crunched cyclists. See hourofpower's posts last page. He should know.

By my experience you can get away with sessions up to 60min of subt per hit if you do 3 sessions per week. With 2 sessions I have built up to 80min per session.

I would encourage experimentation. The idea is to push duration gradually, not power. Power will follow. Start building from 30min and see how it goes. I seldom bothered with intervals however. Just ride 20-30min, turn around, take a swig, ride back at the same effort. Once accumulating 60min is easy, bump power up slightly, reduce volume slightly, and repeat.

Recovery is more about the amount you are willing to eat, anyway, than muscular/tendon load as long as your bike position is okay. I think Coggan's aphorism about one having to spend their glycogen budget wisely is quite apt.

No harm riding easy sessions truly easy.

Long rides can be quite long, if you have the time, but it should not compromise the subt sessions.

Three sessions a week is working for a lot of people but for some two is better. There are also a handful of people that struggle or don’t improve with three sessions and I suspect that dropping to two for a while would be better for a lot of them.

As far as the formatting for five days per week goes, play around with it and see what works for you. A variety of options could work. Something like:

Off/E/Q/off/E/Q/Long could work well.

Somebody posted a couple of pages back about how they are a low 15 minute guy and follow the basic structure but swap Thursday for a bike. Maybe they had another bike day in there as well I can’t remember. So it would be:

E/Sub-T run/E/Sub-T bike/E/Sub-T run/Long

They keep 3 min reps the day before the long run and the first sub-T of the week alternated between 10 minute and 5-6 minute reps.

I do NSA adapted to two workouts per week. In fact I slowly built to 2x45min sub-T per week, which in theory is somewhat equivalent (not 1:1 though) to the 3x30min sub-T workouts. I just found that my body recovers better with two days in between. It is a muscle tone thing, as Bakken suggests. I am rarely snappy two days later, but am more likely to feel that way three days later. I am guessing part of this is that my rest/stress are inconsistent throughout each week because I have a very demanding job and variable home life responsibilities. One poor night's sleep, and recovery is out the window if I only give myself one day between workouts––even easy sub-T ones. This gives me more flexibility in that regard, and I still get 90 minutes of sub-T in per week. I do 3x10min and 10x3min and have been improving consistently.

When I first started with NSM, I was only using HR on easy runs and figured I would be fine with RPE on the sub-t runs. It was working quite well for a few months until I started dealing with various challenges like recovering from illness or warmer weather.

I would notice after the fact that my average HR was a bit too high and I would tell myself that I would take it easier on the next workout. But I never seemed to be able to control things as much as I wanted by using pace and RPE alone.

There's no need to look at the beginning of the workout as long as you start conservatively, but I like to start monitoring HR about midway through 2nd rep of a 3*10 minute for example.

It has made a huge difference for me, not only do the workouts feel easier and more relaxed, but my recovery has improved and I feel considerably better the next day.

This makes no sense. 3x10 and 10x3 comes to 60 minutes, not 90 minutes.

Much the same. I used to trust feel and RPE and be firmly in the camp of that's all you need. I'm old but have started to embrace even basic tech, GPS watch, HR monitor. It's so much easier to control things. HR for sure doesn't tell the whole story, but it can sometimes stop me lying and pretending something is easy when it's not.

I also keep an eye on HR during workouts. Not to shape it really, or run to it, but it's incredibly useful to reign you in, especially if it's hot or you know you are maybe under the weather going in. It's probably saved me in a few weeks where previously I wouldn't have scaled back the workouts. I can usually tell when I'm in trouble. On the 60-90 second rests when it's super hot or under the weather my HR doesn't fall like when I'm in the condition to push the boundaries a bit. It's so much less stressful than having to have only a few seconds when under stress to take your pulse properly etc.

Actually these days, I think RPE can sometimes fool me into a false sense of security. HR I especially find useful on the easy running and can't imagine doing something like measuring pulse manually etc. I used to be that guy but my goodness me, I wish i had come to the modern world sooner!

I don't think there is anything wrong with using no tech if you really don't want to. But there is almost certainly new pieces of information you can learn about making your training better. Even if it's just a GPS watch and HR monitor.

Sorry! I meant that I do the 10 min and 3 min variants. It's more like 4-5x10 min, then 14-15x3 min the other day.

First things first.

I'm not suggested anyone else do this. But I posted around 4 months ago asking about cadence, curious at sirpoc's shuffle and whether it makes him more efficient.

So, what I did was try and go from a cadence of around 160, to around 190 for my easy runs of around 5:15/km since I last posted.

It took a while, but instead of my bounding style, lean forward, I've gone to a more upright shuffling heel strike. It feels silly, it took a while to work out, but I think it's more efficient.

VO and VR indicate less energy loss, GCT time is reduced and it feels a lot easier on my legs. It felt very weird at first. Still does now, but I don't have to think about it so much. Definitely feel fresher going into workouts.

My easy pace has reduced for the same HR and whilst I can't completely replicate it at race paces, my cadence has increased there a bit and I have slightly reduced all the metrics to again indicate I'm wasting less energy. I have gotten around 4s/km faster there for the same effort, but much less of an improvement compared to easy pace increase.

This goes against any sound advice. In that you should probably just run and let your body take care of the rest. Also that just about nobody would advise going from what people always told me was a solid, forefoot stride, to what is now ultimately and ungamely looking shuffle.

Probably the least useful post, but I always appreciate others when they go away and actually try something and report back.