Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

yeah fair answers! i guess either i've made a slight optimisation or it doesn't matter either way, so will give it a go! another thing i've tweaked is raising the rests periods for the longer intervals, as i hadn't appreciated there's some optionality around them also (i was previously only using 60 seconds).

i'm hopeful that these changes are enough to reign in my heart rate which had occasionally crept over SubT.

While I'm not specifically doing the Nor method, this thread has influenced my training in a positive way. Actually recovering from my easy runs and not breaking my stones on workouts.

Start by ignoring synthetic numbers that may or may not tell you anything meaningful.

Next, give us some meaningful information to work with, like what your actual schedule and workouts were, and how this compares to your previous training.

And is your body telling you that there's anything wrong with your current training? That's what counts.

Agree. A week is nothing. In the grand scheme of things it's like running for a bus a couple of times then asking if you should have gone faster/slower. Follow the book, based on a recentish race/TT, for a couple of months and see how you settle into it. Don't look for performance gains in that time, just get used to the routine and feel how it feels week to week. Also agree some basic info would help respond to questions - age, weight, current level, anything unusual, etc.

I am curious what the specific limiting factor is for most people that keeps them at that ~90 minute/week of quality sub-T or wherever their sustainable limit lies? Is it keeping the legs healthy / injury prevention? Is it general fatigue levels carrying into following days? Is it "dead legs" from smashing sessions too hard?

I have been slowly trying to ramp into the vanilla 3 sessions a week (1:30 of sub-T total). I have gotten back into running over since early 2025 after taking a few years off, ramped up to 8-9 hours a week and held there for the last ~7 months before this with pretty limited speed work as I try to hold things together as I do a few races and work into a long-term plan. I finally did my first full week of 3x a week (achieved by skipping a serious long run though) and feel really good aerobically, but am worried about damaging myself if I get too attached to holding the routine. I feel like I have more effort available to give in some ways but my muscles and tendons have to be brought up gently.

For the last 2 months I have been working through some upper hamstring tendinopathy and really limiting any runs at faster paces. I think various exercises and lower intensity has been working and the hamstring is finally mostly feeling good during sub-T efforts, but now I have been feeling medial shin splints in the same leg which I think was kicked off by turning my foot a bit inward to ease the upper hamstring soreness. Last summer when I was bringing up my mileage it was my hip flexors always giving me trouble. I feel lucky I've been able to maintain mileage for the most part without letting anything get too bad, but basically I feel like whenever I introduce anything remotely hard it's just one niggle in the legs after another, and my intensity control almost entirely revolves around injury prevention.

Injuries are a sign that the load is too much for you to handle at the moment. You will need to back-off and get healthy before diving into three sessions a week.

You also seem to have ramped up incredibly quickly. You went from not running for a few years to 7 hours a week and now 8-9 in a bit over a year. Why? You can squeeze so much stimulus out of lower volume levels before needing to improve. This is one of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen people make with this method. They ramp up way too quickly.

Thanks - appreciate the wide view reality check. I would say I was not a total couch potato - running inconsistently, maybe an hour a week on average, before the big ramp-up but I agree it's been a huge change. I think in my earlier running journey I have generally been good about backing off from turning small aches into serious injuries but will keep staying healthy a priority over the sub-T work.

I think it can be a little deceptive reading sirpoc's book and other accounts where the progression (to me) seemed quite quick even before he started NSM - from not running, 28 minute 5k in 2021 => sub 20 minute in 2022 (with traditional training) =>18:50 wall in 2023 => further progression after just ~7 months of NSM. Granted everyone's athletic background and ability to accept training load is different.

It influenced me the same way.

It seemed great. Almost too good to be true. Slower easy runs. Slower workouts. And yet the promise of faster race times!

That promise was not realized. All that subthreshold stuff made me slower. Granted, however, I did not get hurt.

I wish all my competitors would train by NSM.

Did you keep the same load ..?

Cause (like du'h) keeping the same mileage and just lowering all your paces is going to make you slower

I recently realised that 7.5 hours weekly, 90min ST, is basically maintaining my fitness at this stage. Needle hasn't really moved in terms of race performance. I read the term "drip load" in the Bakken book and I'm curious to see how tiny I can make the drips until I start seeing improvement, so I'm increasing easy volume by 3 seconds every easy run. For example, the first two weeks:

Mon 1: 60'03"
Wed 1: 60'06"
Fri 1: 60'09"
Sun 1: 90'12"
Mon 2: 60'15"
Wed 2: 60'18"
Fri 2: 60'21"
Sun 2: 90'24"

And so on. I'll keep going until I reach 7 hours and 45 minutes. A 15-minute bump, 3 seconds at a time. When I've let that settle for a few weeks, I'll add 1 minute of ST volume to each of the three workouts, bringing them up to 3x10'20"/5x6'12"/10x3'06". Then hold the line.

This is probably horrendously inefficient and ridiculous, but switching to this method gives you this great feeling of "I have nothing but time" since I'm finally avoiding injury and can train continuously, rather than thinking in blocks.

100% It's literally in the first post about the training! Quoted here:

If you're training more than 7+ hours per week, or resilient enough (or running low enough mileage/time) to hit harder paces and still recover, than this probably isn't the best way to train for your fastest time.

And I say that as a defense of this training. It's really just the way to try to maximize load and training for those running ~1 hour a day in singles.

So, 75 weeks until you'll increase your ST volume. Will you take the aging factor into account in your experiment as well? :-)

Think you've added it up as if they're adding 3 seconds to all 4 easy days in the week, per week. They're adding 3 seconds to the next easy run every time they finish an easy run.

So adding 30 seconds total the first week (3+6+9+12) then 48 seconds starts accumulating on top of that every week thereafter (15+18+21+24=78">27+30+33+36=126").

It'll take ~18 weeks to get up to their new easy volume target of 7:45. Same as adding 5 minutes of easy running and holding onto 7:35 for 6 weeks.

Sorry, their new *weekly* volume target of 7:45

I kept the same total weekly mileage (50-65 as always for many years) but roughly
tripled the volume of workout miles (from 1x 3-4 miles of VO2 max-ish
efforts to 2-3x sub threshold sessions.) It didn't work for me. I did
requalify for Boston but ran slow for me despite perfect weather. My "fitness"
as measured by intervals.icu had climbed from around 30 to 68 but that didn't pay off.

After going back to shorter, harder workouts my "fitness" number
is down and the "loads" from workouts are smaller, but I'm already running more competitive times. Maybe I don't need "load" after years of consistent marathoning, just sharpening.

if you were already sustainably running a VO2max-based plan I wonder what benefit you were seeking from NSM? it's supposed to be for people who cannot sustain such plans, so instead build aerobic base from below. if you can sustain high intensity then NSM won't touch the sides.

it's also not a marathon plan, at least without tweaks, so i'm not sure your sample size of 1x bad boston is saying much about NSM.

Still haven't broken 16, stuck on 16:01, probably need to hit Battersea Park!

But just a quick ancedote. Haven't trained for anything really other than the basic vanilla which seems perfect for 5k training (down from a mid 17 after half a decade slogging!), but jumped into my county champs 800 at the weekend, just for run really and to support a few friends. No real expectation, haven't ran an 800 in a few years. Ran 2:07!

Still crazy to me how you can just jump into these really short races. I think cheetodusts posts had given me confident I could maybe run 2:10 at best. But 2:07 for me is wild. The other crazy thing is a 2 minute race and my legs are still sore now a few days on lol

While it's totally possible this does not work for you, something is not right with the load calculations; that VO2max workout will be higher load than any individual sub-T session, so your overall load with 2x sub-T should only be a little bit higher. 30 versus 68 doesn't make sense unless you took a lot of time off and detrained.

the benefit I was seeking was to avoid injury (after a few setbacks) and run a respectable but not stellar time -- for that it was OK