Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

This is the interesting thing. Henrik is coaching possibly one of the greatest runners of all time, if he carries on his trajectory - and I doubt there's very little he'd change from some of the stuff being posted in this thread. What's amazing, is in general, hope open they are with their training. I know the double thresholds and the hill sessions/speed sessions things are a little more guesswork, but Kristoffer literally puts every run on Strava, with all splits, intervals as well as the lactate results. So it was so easy for me to roughly copy, very little guesswork.

Anecdotally and to the point about blood lactate varying with intensity, but also duration at that intensity. It’s very similar for HR. I found when doing 1K-4K intervals for a total volume of 12K, my average HR on these intervals was near the HR I averaged in the marathon. However, my pace on these intervals was usually at or slightly slower than half marathon pace. I of course knew that when racing, the fact that it is continuous and a distance greater than the workout volume, my pace to HR was not going to match what I was doing in my workouts. In fact, I did a 18 mile tempo run at nearly the same pace I averaged for the marathon at an average HR of 155 bpm (80% HR_Max), in the marathon I averaged 163 bpm (84% HR_Max). Maybe I shouldn’t have tapered at all for that race? LOL.

For reference, when I ran the half marathons, my HR averaged 91% Max_HR. I never approached this effort in my tempo interval sessions though (for the average of the interval). I was running high volume during this time, 10.5-11.5 hours per week most weeks and do feel the higher general volume contributes to the HR values staying lower. When I’m not running as much volume, say around 7.5-8.0 hours per week, my heart rate on tempo interval sessions will rise higher to about 90% HR_Max.

I think this is pretty established though that the fitter you are aerobically, the harder it is to approach that higher HR in sessions, since it requires a more intense pace if the duration is not sufficiently long enough. Conversely, in a race, you can hold a higher percent of HR_Max since you are more aerobically fit.

Sirpoc: You mentioned 17:27 as your 5k race time. This is a CV pace of about 03:38/km.

You do easy at around 05:10/km which is 70%CV. Same as J. Ingebrigtsen.

You mentioned:
The rest of the sessions are anything from 25x400 to 3x3k.
25x400 is probably around 98-99% of Tinman's CV.
10x1k is around 12-15k pace.
5x2k is around HM pace.
6x1600 right around 10 mile pace.

What paces are those 1k/2k/mile for you?

You called it sub-threshold/sweetspot, but did you mean sub-CV?

Can you clarify that?

Yeah Friels test is actually not bad.

If you have a good HR strap and use it the Garmin calculation is actually really accurate as well

Which is more advisable for an 18 minute runner for a basic aerobic run

15 miles AM at 8:20

Or

10 miles AM and 5 miles PM at 8:20

I don’t think he’s using CV as his anchor in the discussion generally

Agree with this as well. Friels test needs a shave since in my experience its a few beats high

its more like a CV heartrate than LT

Hi Lexel, these are paces that keep my sub threshold state. So these were all tested with a lactate meter. The paces are kind of irrelevant, they just are to give an idea of what speeds I run for me, to keep my mmol in the desired range at a maximum of just below threshold or even a little under that. I just call it sub threshold in the sense it is pushing up my lactate from below, much like the success I had whilst cycling. I mean the best tool would be a real time lactate meter, I hear that actually one of Tadej Pogacar's coaches is very close to a prototype.

The paces are all different of course, but with different lengths with the rests, when I spent a month or so testing them, they all got me to around about the same range of lactate. Plus it's nice to have some practises at different velocities and speeds. The training is boring enough as it is. But I would guess you could just stick to one set, if you really wanted to. Maybe Kristoffer is training for something longer again, as he much favours heavily the 3k repeats.

Now I have new data and the fact I've gotten fitter based on a quicker 10k, relative to my 5k, I'll adjust my actual paces to back within the parameters I set. As this thread is still quite active I have a lactate meter I can borrow again and I'll buy some test strips and see. So I'll raise the actual pace for say 1k, but leave it relative to my 15 k pace and I *should* see the same sort of lactate levels, within the margins of error that is good enough for me.

I've been a forum lurker for a long time. But Lexel I just don't understand why you always bring everything back to CV? You seem unhealthy obsessed with it which complicates things further.

I dude posting made it clear right at the start those are just paces that gets him in a range of sub threshold. Sub threshold state is obviously going to be different depending on the length of the reps.

Sorry Lexel, I forgot to add in what paces I actually ran (like I say, I need to update them based on yesterday) I had a hunch I was going to have to adjust them and do a good run yesterday, based on my HR being a few beats lower for these, in the last couple of weeks.

1ks I aimed for around 3:44.

1600 I aimed for 3:46

2k around 3:49

That usually always got me into around the same lactate range. All 60 seconds rest.

I pretty much give myself a very small window.

Maybe slightly under when you are starting out. Say 84-88% when you are dont have the efficiency at Threshold. As you progress, your LTHR will move up slightly, say to 88-92% of MAX.

Obviously you also have to take into account if you have an accurate MAX HR value and the time of day you are doing your workout

Hi Sirpoc, thank you for all of your contributions and openness. How often are you running your park runs / racing? This sounds like the X factor of the Norwegian system, their hills, the element harder than threshold. How important do you think this stimulus has been for improvement, and what’s the longest stretch you’ve gone without racing, just running the threshold workouts, and what was your improvement like from beginning to end of that stretch?

You bring up a good point about standardization. Also, language.

Tinman "tempos" are different than JD's "tempos," which are different than Pfitz's "tempo runs" and Hanson's (which are basically goal MP).

I wish running had a standard set of params that all methods could use.

I run them when I can. I'm a very fair weather runner, in the sense if it's raining there is 0% chance I'm going to park run 🤣 it varies. I've done 24 in a 2 and a bit years years running, so that is roughly once a month or every 5 weeks. Maybe if I look back in the last year , it looks like once every 4 weeks on average. But there's been 7-8 week gaps, then back to back weeks attending if I had friends to meet up with etc. FWIW it's an interesting point you raise, but considering about 75% of all my park runs ever have been PBs, it's hard to tell if how often gaps between them, affects performance. My biggest gap I Pb'd, I once did 3 in 4 weeks which is the biggest congregated together and my third out of those 3 was my worst performance, in relation to previous pb time. But I don't think there's enough to go on. So I'll certainly keep an eye on it, down the line as to if there are any patterns. Parkruns are really great for me, I can run to and from it from my house, it's timed, it's free, it's social and most importantly it gives me real data and feedback on how progress is going and if you adjust paces and move onto the next level.

We ultimately train to race, so our race performance is the ultimate predictor of, well, our race performance LOL. I get what Lexel is saying in regard to having a standard pace that is then reported as a percentage of when structuring workouts. I think that has seemingly been what many tried to do with LT (defined as 60 minute race pace). I know Tinman has his reasons both bioenergetic and statistical that he thinks CV is better than LT (perhaps some of those are promotional too though), but depending on your physiological make up and race distance you’re training for, CV could be far off from your race pace say if you run the marathon as opposed to if you are racing 5km to 10km. So if you used LT (60 minute race pace) that would be closer to half marathon and marathon race pace and thus would likely come with a narrower window of predictive error. Point being, in either scenario, it’s an arbitrary lab value.

As I’ve said before, we don’t seem to have a true understanding of the mechanism that underlines the variety of adaptions we see to a variety of athletes using a variety of training philosophies. No one seems to be able to know that CV is a good predictor of 5km performance simply because it is closer as a percentage, and thus physiological demand, to 5km race pace any more than because it holds some deeper physiological influence.

We know the further up in distance you go, say from 5km to the marathon, the more overall volume contributes. Yes you can run good predictor workouts and have good lab metrics but that’s a lot different than running an actual race. I know from personal experience that I can run my 5 km best off about 7.5 hours per week (and possibly my 10km best too). But I fall off slightly for half and even more for full. If I reach 9.5 in singles, that’s basically me at my best for the half and full (correlates to what Lydiard suggested too btw). However, of interest, is that I’m no faster over 5km with that added volume and only marginally better at 10km, to the point it could just be some random factor on the day of the races/tests I’ve done. I think of this as an “adaptive threshold”. Whether it’s my body being able to only absorb so much or physically just not being able to run any faster than a certain percentage of say my 400m speed, is a curious discussion, but the reality of my performance doesn’t change.

Not to belabor this point, but Daniels has said on various occasions that there is no physiological difference in training at marathon pace than at your easy pace, seemingly implying that you should stick to what he defines as T pace if you want to improve your LT. However, if I try to run Daniels T pace spot on, I always feel like I’m overreaching and can only handle one of those workouts a week and no more than 10km volume. However, if I slow down by just 4-8 seconds per 1600m, I can do 12km in volume, twice per week, and see race performance improvements relative to previous races where I did follow a Daniels approach. I also notice I always seem to over perform what my workouts would “predict”. I’m always slower in workouts than what race performances and calculators say I should be.

Racing should be the priority for training, but that's harder to learn than it sounds. Sounds so simple and yet so very easy not to stick to. Im sure we all have stories from our past where our ego completely ran the show. Called being young mostly.

To the Daniels point, i couldnt disagree with that more. Marathon pace for runners is essentially Zone 2/LT1 work. I think at this point there is a mountain of evidence that show very distinct adaptations and advantages to running in Zone 2 vs running Easy.

Take two runners for instance in a summer build up to fall XC. One runner does only E runs according to Daniels and strides. Another runner does a variation with 3-4 days a week with higher Aerobic/Zone 2/LT1 work.

Im putting my money on the Zone 2 runner to really be able to springboard into the harder work and racing in the fall

I'd say this system works great when fueling and fat burning are not a higher consideration, basically 1500-HM (depending on how long you are on your feet for the HM). WHen you are talking full Marathon, you really need to think about the demands of that event, and the other considerations and adaptations youll need for 2:20-4:00 of work. There you definitely need the longer runs and you definitely need the LT1/Zone2 work to juice your fat burning capacity and spare as much glycogen as possible for as long as you possibly can to not bonk. In the Half, depending on how long it takes, same considerations.

You really have to think about the limiting factors in the event. Like people keep popping in with previously "oh you need VO2 work". Id guess 98% of people running 5k-HM, their VO2 Max is not their biggest limiting factor to running faster, which is the goal here as you have stated. Not just putting up huge training numbers or physiological stats, but speed over a given distance.

I am (and have been) trying 2 workouts per week with Daniel's T-pace plus 3-8 seconds, depending on duration of intervals, plus a (sometimes progressie) long run. Unfortunately I got sick in the middle of this, so didn

..so didn't really get to test the progress. It definitely feels doable to maintain for months, I will try to up the volume on the workouts. Maybe I will need to slow down a bit then. This thread makes me hopeful that this type of training might be a good approach.

I am not obsessed with CV and i don't want to turn this thread into a CV discussion. However, CV has it's scientific place and value and it is a real metabolic threshold, which is not the case for the 60min threshold (TH60). The TH60 came from experience and pratice and is below CV. There are endless threads in this forum, were people talk about 'Threshold' running, without providing even a statement what they mean. That is subpar and can be avoided. There is a solution outside and cycling had exactly the same problem.

In my next post you will see, why having a common base and language is relevant.