Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

I must admit, I'm not all that worried about stuff like that .. If I'm loosing too much time in SUBT state, I'll just fiddle with the warmup/cool down, so I'll start the first rep earlier and do 1.5 lap or similar and then continue as usual.

But I guess that is an argument for doing shorter intervals as you can just add an extra rep, if you're getting too fast??

What do I know? :)

Bakken wrote in his NMA book that the longer 10+ minutes intervals should not be done more than once a week.

I get the pacing thing .. and agreed, that is one of of star chapters of the book.

But but I don't have any race planned before May next year, so it's all about fitness currently.

If I do race, it's going to be on a whim and therefore not particularly important for me for nail it 100% :)

We're below 10 minutes here ... at 7.5 minutes it's between the 6 min and the 10 min :D

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I've yet to read his book, but given recent podcast, I assume it's about muscle tone?

Which makes me ask ... Why run the longer ones at all?

The short ones give you more rests to relieve muscle tone and also teach you about pacing and if you get faster, just add an extra rep and you're good?

I missed this reply on first glance .. just before a page break

But thanks! :)

After doing a bit of devils advocate questioning here, I'm currently at the following conclusions.

I'm getting the sense that shorter reps might be helping a bit with regards to pacing especially if you run shorter races.

They're are probably also easier on your muscles as you get more micro breaks.

I guessing you can spend more time near lactate threshold too maybe? ... That typical graph of running intervals vs. continuous that also is in Sirpoc's book.

But since no one is running only short reps then I'm guessing that you'll lose a bit of endurance and the ability to keep going by only doing short intervals?

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I'm guessing all of this is important stuff, if you're looking to win your next 5k be it the local Parkrun or you travel for a masters race.

For most hobby joggers it's probably not that big of a deal.

There is a certain breed of hobby joggers that can't be arsed turn up to something as short as a 5k as it feels too little value for money given how much time you have to set aside for it.

Thats too big of a simplification imo. Many beginners would struggle only running long intervals as they don't have the muscular endurance to run them with quality. It is also very hard to adjust volume if you are just running 8 or 10 minute intervals. (Say you have 3x10min and want to increase volume a little bit, well 33% up is the only way to go).

Additional benefits could be to have a slightly higher heartrate and a bit different stimulus for the muscles which helps with the variation.

Mechanically, the short reps are a little harder on your legs.

runningwritings.com

Understanding tissue loading, tissue damage, and running injuries

John Davis

Open link

(TLDR: generating more mechanical force over the same distance (i.e. a quicker pace) generates more physical damage to tendons and muscles than a slower pace, regardless of lactate levels)

There's probably a marginal benefit to mixing up rep length. Anecdotally, a period of just running longer reps worked OK for me, just running shorter reps was not sustainable for me. Mixed reps seems to work the best for me.

You could always do 3 x 10, then 1 x 5 at same pace/effort. don't NEED to do 4 x 10

According to Bakken, rep/speed variation is key for threshold training (the whole threshold zone is pretty narrow in terms of muscular stimulus, and since the body is quick to adapt to monotonous work there's a risk for plateaus if all sessions are the same).

And the rep rest duration is an important factor as well. Andreas Almgren runs a lot of 400m intervals at 5k and 10k pace, and he uses different rep rest durations to keep the lactate in control for both these paces.

I think the durations are somewhat significant. The 3-minute reps let you hit paces you would otherwise miss, and it feels like they're the leading edge of improved fitness. And reps longer than 10 minutes come with a higher cost in terms of recovery. My current block of NSM has been much smoother sailing than earlier attempts because I've gotten a lot closer to vanilla than I was before, when I was trying to do 4, 6 and 13 minute reps.

From the Book of Sirpoc 40:6:

Elsewhere he mentions that +/-30 seconds is okay for the 3-minute reps, and +/-60 seconds is okay for the longer reps, which means I can do sensible interval lengths of 800m, 1 mile, and 1.5 miles. With the same flexible guidelines, you can probably work out a reasonable workout plan for your 7.5-minute loop.

Been running since 7th grade and been doing double threshold since 9th grade.

Prs for each year are as follows:

9th 5k XC, TF: 15:36, 15:09 (40-45 mpw)

10th 5k XC, TF: 15:05, 14:49 (50-55 mpw)

11th 5k XC, TF: 14:52, 14:35 (65-67 mpw)

12th 5k XC, TF: 14:29, 14:05 (70-75, with 1-2 weeks at 80 mpw)

just bumped up to 85 for last 4 months since starting this plan and am attempting to do this consistently, as that is something I've failed to do in the past, but also something I know is one of the main hallmarks of double threshold.

Oops, realized I forgot Sunday, I typically run 6 miles on Sun

Same here. When I originally did the thread I was doing reps longer or outside the guidelines. I'm not quite sure why? Maybe I felt the need to stamp my own authority on it. A few people posted about how they went back to basics, so I did that as well. Best move I made!

When it comes to the rep length, the intensity etc for vanilla NSM, you really don't need to experiment much yourself, for anyone else worrying about this. Sirpoc did all the hard work for us and then thousands of others usually say the same who have trained like this for a while, stick to the basics.

It's probably that the basics give you the best of everything that time allows. Sure, it's missing stuff, but on 5-8 hours a week you absolutely are going to have to sacrifice some stuff. Varying rep lengths at least keeps some faster movement over the week on the 3 min days.

Honestly, I don't think it matters much whether you're doing 3/6/10 or 4/6/13, you just have to scale the paces accordingly. If you do 4x10 at 30k pace or whatever, you'd probably want to do 3x15 at M pace -- although even at 30k pace they should still work. The 3-minute-intervals are probably an exception because you're running them roughly at LT2 pace and at least I usually reach LT2HR by the end of the 9th or 10th interval. With 4 minutes at that pace, I would hit LT2HR probably by the 5th or so.

I wrote "gradually." Not responding to the rest. Good luck or sorry to hear that.

Why not do you strength training after your workout so you can have fresh legs for faster paces

One theory of physiology is that you only train the muscle fibers you recruit. I believe my old coach (Tinman) once told me that running at x:xx pace will train the muscle fibers that run +/- 15 sec/mile from that speed. This supports the argument for variable speeds in training! For athletes running 5k and below, the short rep sessions of 60/30 or 45/15 at 10kish effort become important as a specific endurance session. However, it has been interesting to see many in this thread have success without those short sessions! I would speculate they are more slow-twitch dominant athletes who can recruit 70-80% (or more) of their muscle fiber pool at the slower end of threshold.

Valid question - first of all, I sweat like a pig on the treadmill without the wind cooling me off so I don't particularly want to hang around in the gym after the sub-T dripping sweat everywhere, and would much rather go straight to the shower. Secondly, my focus is on running overall, but I find that doing intervals a bit tired feels better and is more effective than doing strength training tired, I run seven days a week but want to prioritise strength on the days that I do do it if I can. Thirdly, as slow as I am at running, I suck way more at weights so there's more room for improvement there. There are always tradeoffs but I'm happy with my results for now, until I max out my CTL on hours available I'm not too worried about chasing marginal gains.