Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

marky mark aus wrote:

This is great! What I love about this thread is that the OP's first inquiry was downvoted a bunch, yet some thoughtful Letsrunners enlivened the conversation with their constructive contributions. Would love to hear more on this thread from folks who've seen success from doing this over the long term. For me, I have been training for the mile (although always been too slow for a miler) using this method, and I felt like my 1500-mile times were stagnating for a while as I raised my CTL with 3x threshold weekly – however, my 5k and above times were dropping rapidly, and my mile splits were more consistent! The instant I subbed one threshold session for hill repeats and some specific track sessions, my shorter distance times also dropped much quicker than usual. So, for next training block I am learning for myself that I can keep doing the 3x threshold to get really strong for a while, then only minor tweaks later on can give me the muscular strength/coordination to hit those faster paces.

I guess what I'm realizing is that the fear I had of not improving at short distances from doing mostly threshold work isn't totally warranted – just need to add some "tuning" or "sharpening" workouts, and the times have still dropped. I used to hit the track twice weekly with threshold and hard VO2 work mixed in, but did not see the same improvement, I think likely because the mile is still highly aerobic, and much like sirpoc's early comments, my earlier CTL was much lower. My takeaway from this personal experience is that there's a layer of high-end aerobic work in the program that works so reliably, and tweaking the program slightly to meet the anaerobic demands of the 800-mile can yield great results after months of doing threshold-heavy work. Thanks all for a great, informative thread.

marky mark aus wrote:

This is great! What I love about this thread is that the OP's first inquiry was downvoted a bunch, yet some thoughtful Letsrunners enlivened the conversation with their constructive contributions. Would love to hear more on this thread from folks who've seen success from doing this over the long term. For me, I have been training for the mile (although always been too slow for a miler) using this method, and I felt like my 1500-mile times were stagnating for a while as I raised my CTL with 3x threshold weekly – however, my 5k and above times were dropping rapidly, and my mile splits were more consistent! The instant I subbed one threshold session for hill repeats and some specific track sessions, my shorter distance times also dropped much quicker than usual. So, for next training block I am learning for myself that I can keep doing the 3x threshold to get really strong for a while, then only minor tweaks later on can give me the muscular strength/coordination to hit those faster paces.

I guess what I'm realizing is that the fear I had of not improving at short distances from doing mostly threshold work isn't totally warranted – just need to add some "tuning" or "sharpening" workouts, and the times have still dropped. I used to hit the track twice weekly with threshold and hard VO2 work mixed in, but did not see the same improvement, I think likely because the mile is still highly aerobic, and much like sirpoc's early comments, my earlier CTL was much lower. My takeaway from this personal experience is that there's a layer of high-end aerobic work in the program that works so reliably, and tweaking the program slightly to meet the anaerobic demands of the 800-mile can yield great results after months of doing threshold-heavy work. Thanks all for a great, informative thread.

2 wrote:

135354221 wrote:

My recent parkrun was 17:58 so I put that into the vdot calculator and got a threshold pace of 3:51 per km which is 6:11 min/mile pace. How do I calculate sub threshold pace from this? Thanks

I highly recommend reading the thread, even if it takes a few days/weeks to get through. Sirpoc recommends paces early on, and then others chime in and validate it, including tweaks for HM or M training (consensus is this will work for HM, but M requires slight modifications)

Here are the pace recommendations:

25x400 @ 99% CV, 30s rest
10k1k @ 15k pace, 60s rest
6x1mi @ 10 mile pace, 60s rest
5x2k @ HMP to 25k pace, 60s rest
3k @ 25k-30k pace, 60s rest

To increase stress, add a rep and slow down, rather than speed up. When it doubt, slow down. Don't bother looking at HR during the workout but if you notice it is trending downwards after a few sessions, you could speed up your next session.

jecht wrote:

2 wrote:

I highly recommend reading the thread, even if it takes a few days/weeks to get through. Sirpoc recommends paces early on, and then others chime in and validate it, including tweaks for HM or M training (consensus is this will work for HM, but M requires slight modifications)

Here are the pace recommendations:

25x400 @ 99% CV, 30s rest
10k1k @ 15k pace, 60s rest
6x1mi @ 10 mile pace, 60s rest
5x2k @ HMP to 25k pace, 60s rest
3k @ 25k-30k pace, 60s rest

To increase stress, add a rep and slow down, rather than speed up. When it doubt, slow down. Don't bother looking at HR during the workout but if you notice it is trending downwards after a few sessions, you could speed up your next session.

What were the modifications for M training? I read pages 2 and 60 to get the gist of the training again to be safe and even searched on Reddit/r/AdvancedRunning. I probably missed them somewhere.

2 wrote:

135354221 wrote:

My recent parkrun was 17:58 so I put that into the vdot calculator and got a threshold pace of 3:51 per km which is 6:11 min/mile pace. How do I calculate sub threshold pace from this? Thanks

I highly recommend reading the thread, even if it takes a few days/weeks to get through. Sirpoc recommends paces early on, and then others chime in and validate it, including tweaks for HM or M training (consensus is this will work for HM, but M requires slight modifications)

Here are the pace recommendations:

25x400 @ 99% CV, 30s rest
10k1k @ 15k pace, 60s rest
6x1mi @ 10 mile pace, 60s rest
5x2k @ HMP to 25k pace, 60s rest
3k @ 25k-30k pace, 60s rest

To increase stress, add a rep and slow down, rather than speed up. When it doubt, slow down. Don't bother looking at HR during the workout but if you notice it is trending downwards after a few sessions, you could speed up your next session.