Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

One thing I would reiterate is the necessity of running enough easy mileage to support this volume of threshold work (10K of volume in a single session). I am currently doing the sort of workouts you mentioned while averaging ~100 km per week.

If I were running 80 km per week, I'd scale it down to something like 8x1K and 4x2K.

It should somehow scale up or down to your weekly mileage.

Definitely. I mentioned this a few times. The absolute limit is 30% of the volume is "hard" That is the limit IMO max. I'm currently doing 85-90km per week now and it is basically 75% of time in zone is easy. This definitely feels sustainable and ive been around that for a year now. You could just about you could argue it fits into the 80/20 rule, in the sense that the 25% isn't that hard (compared to what Seiler proposed for the 20%) so you can likely get away with a tad more of it. I'm probably averaging 105 minutes sub threshold a week, in a total week of 420 minutes running. The rest is all easy, under 65% MAS as we talked about or under 70% max HR (for me, pretty much the same boundaries).

Sirpoc84: Been following this thread from the shadows for a while, and been really impressed by the simplicity and effectiveness of this training style.

As a trail runner focused on 10 to 50k races on mountain trails, on top of the threshold work, I've been using an all-out hill session once a week at the end of the long run (~20k easy then 10x30s on/60s off).

Since I've seen an increase in performance with just 9 sub-threshold sessions, now I'm wondering if I should instead try to keep the hill session around threshold as well, or if pushing near max once a week is still beneficial?

Jiggy, your first lactate test at easy levels seems to be quite off compared to the second test. Maybe you were not well hydrated, or not well recovered or you eat something close before. There is too much difference to the second test to be reliable (for the easy levels). I bet on the second test. But you got better: HR got lower and also lactate at 16.3kph is better with the second one. I don't use either the avg HR, nor the max HR during a ramp protocol, i use the avg HR of the last minute of a ramp based on experience, because HR needs some time to settle, and one single HR spike is not of interest, which would influence a max level.

I full agree with other posters that the intensity matters. It is not the same to train at 2mmoler or 4mmoler as an example. I just had a 8 week training period, were i did easy and so called sweetspot Q sessions (around 90%FTP, 2x/week, around 85%CV) on the bike, resulting in lactate levels of 2.5-3.0mmol. After 8 weeks i had zero improvement on higher power numbers, and a small improvement on the easy power output. My resume is that the Q sessions were too easy for me (fast twitcher).

Thanks for sharing your data!

This was an interesting site i came across if you wanted to do you a quick dump of all your 'thresholds'

You just have to get the .csv format correct with their example to your data and you are good to go

Hello lexel, I can assure you that I was well hydrated before tests and had been fasted +4 hours prior to both tests. If anything, I was more recovered prior to the first test since it took place right AFTER a deload week. This second test took place during the deload week.

I don't know what you want to make of that.

Something I did not mention in my previous notes that my training was almost entirely around 4:00/km pace (15 km/h) or SLOWER. I have not done any repeats at 3:40/km pace (16.3 km/h), and I still managed to take down the lactate at that speed a full 1.0 mmol/L.

My pleasure.

Cool find and share, I will give it a go.

Thanks again for everyone's input in this thread. Far better than Runner's World!

4:00 is around your HM pace right? If so reading the rest of the thread sirpoc post a lot of in depth, seems a lot of his sub T stuff is around this pace and he also says he brought down at 5k speed and so on. So highly believe this could be correct. You are really improving by that much and lower the lactate at that speed. So full congrats to you. I think now we have enough for even skeptic like me that maybe this is the best way for hobby jogger on 5-8 hours a week. I like 75% as target mention for easy by sirpoc. No more than 25% sub T. Discipline I think be people main issue to stick to this.

4:00/km is exactly my HM average pace. 4:00/km is exactly my HM average pace.

Most of my workouts in the 7 weeks between the two tests were at this pace or slower. Rarely faster and definitely not for long durations. I did a few 400's sessions outdoors with 30 second rest in which I went faster than my HM pace (but also slower at times, due to the harsh humid summer I'm in).

Moreover, I went ahead and did my first VO2 Max work yesterday, after not having done any such work since March. I wanted to do so for two reasons:

1) Sharpen up for a local 5K that I might do next week.

2) Test the system and just introduce some variety to the stress stimulus I've been subjecting myself to.

So I set out to run a classic 5x1K in the evening. It is still very hot over here, but was not overly humid. It was 32.8 degrees Celsius with a relative humidity of 56% yielding a real feel of only 38.3 degrees Celsius (I say only because we can get days with a real feel of 50-55 degrees Celsius, so yeah).

Having woken up with a somehow tight chest and given the conditions, I thought I'd be satisfied with hitting 3:30/km pace, or anything around that.

I split the first rep in 3:20.3, and just started laughing out loud just as I did when I watched Jakob waving to the crowd during the semi final the other day. That first rep felt incredibly easy that I thought there must be something wrong. After a 400m jog recovery, I continued. Well here are the splits for the second, third and fourth kilometers:
3:21.5
3:22.1
3:23.9

Things did get tough for the last reps, and I mentally quit on the fifth last rep after 0.5 km which was also at 3:21/km pace. HR maxed out at 198 bpm which is 98% of Max HR for me.

It was hot, I was solo, I had done weight training and 4 km easy in the morning before work, and I still managed to run faster than I used to during the winter when I had company for some of the workouts.

Sure, I have been running more mileage lately, but that can't be the sole reason behind this. There's something to running these controlled sub threshold efforts.

On we go.

I'm sorry to be that guy. But none of this makes sense. Pure fantasy I think. I just don't believe sirpoc, jiggy, others mention in this thread actually get faster training like this. You think everyone else is wrong? 99% of runners don't train like this. If this was the best way everyone would train like it who is a HJ. There's a reason they don't. I feel like there is something being missed out on all this and it's a bit smoke and mirrors and for whatever reason we are not being told the whole story. You can't just go set regular PBs in the 5k when you are not running any of that pace in training. Coach JS for once I think has probably provided a much better system for HJs multiple times but , his reputation has got him downvoted rather than the fact he's probably actually right for once. His system being MUCH more realistic than this one.

Ah yes, my favourite hobby to come online and make up training systems to random people in a niche part of the internet 🤣🤣 My training is what it is. I've not left anything out. I'm not particularly fast, but I do believe what I'm getting the best out of what I've got. That's in terms of I have a life, a job, responsibilities and also not wanting to get injured. The reason I'm confident it works is I've followed more traditional training plans , absolutely exactly as they were laid out. For about the same time a week. I wasn't faster at all and didn't seem to improve past a certain point and didn't really feel like I was ever fresh or ready for any of the workouts. I'm guessing you will never try this, but I think the main thing that would shock people is how this doesn't feel particularly hard week after week or month after month. There's no killing yourself sessions, there's no session you dread. The main issue you will encounter is maybe boredom or the urge to actually go faster. That is probably the biggest issue I see people running into.

For what it's worth, I trained like this for cycling for a while. Often with some quizzed looks when I told people or chatted to them after races. But now you will find sub threshold or sweetspot added even as a separate zone when you use FTP calculators and it's much more mainstream and widely accepted that it's a very good way to train for time crunched people. Will it be for running? Who knows. Running is a very odd sport in the fact it seems very much how someone described it a few pages back, in the sense coaches tend to prescribe what they prescribe, just because that's how it's "done". If you said to someone 30 years ago cycling would be a metrics driven sport, people would have laughed and said that's for the geeks like Chris Boardman training with his funny gadget, the power meter. 30 years on, if you aren't training with an understanding of metrics and training loads , you are not competing.

So you think everyone here is lying about their results with this type of training?

Why don't you check Klaas Lok's "Easy Interval Method" page on facebook, and read all the success stories?

The training principle is similar. Accumulate a lot of fast, but not too fast miles during the week over a long period of time.

Many people say the paces feel too easy (compared to what they used to do), and yet they get very positive results.

Do you think they are all lying too?

What gets JS downvoted here is his self-promotion, his off-topic posts, his lies, and his arrogance when he says everyone here is wrong and he is right.

But by all means, stick with dancan if you like it. If it works for you, great!

If you bring JS in the game, then must likely you are JS :)

Having said that, i have the feeling that a VO2max session contradicts a Sub-CV session. This is my personal experience, but i have no scientific prove for that, to be honest.

VO2max sessions are likely not needed, because a progressive training load over years, leads automatically to a higher VO2max until it is maxed out. A study about Paula RADCLIFFE, and others, indicate that.

Try not to engage the trolls. I been around here a long time it's likely JS himself just jealous the attention isn't on him.

I do have a question about TSS. Let's say I do a week with 3 moderate runs and easy run , a long run , a vo2 session and a Daniels tempo run. I run all 7 days. I can probably keep this up. In fact I know I can because I have done. One bit I don't understand is a while back you mentioned that this is probably less overall something like this on let's say 7 hours weekly than 3x sub threshold and then easy? That's the past I'm confused about. I would say the training load must be higher, for my week?

Whether you choose to believe it or not is up to you. As if we have anything to gain saying that we are getting results by this method!

Do I think everyone else is wrong? Nope.

Do I think everyone can benefit from this method/system? Yes.

Training (and life) needs not to be black or white. It is a spectrum and we have ended up on a part of it that allows us to see sustainable progress.

I've run my PBs in 2021 off of traditional Daniels training, but I stagnated in a frustrating manner of the next two years. I can now see room for improvement again with this system.

Like sirpoc mentions, I hardly feel beat up after these long, controlled sub threshold efforts.

Yesterday's VO2 Max session? Quiet the opposite. I felt a noticeable fatigue and soreness post workout, and my recovery metrics from the Garmin mirrors that completely.

Besides, you do realize that the defending world champion in the 5000m does train in a similar fashion, don't you?

IMO the training load/CTL and TSS gets to the heart of why this works. Whilst those metrics are far from perfect, as I've explained I feel like they offer a lot and I still don't think there has been anything, to date, better to replace it. I also am firm in believing still as long as you collate and collect data accurately with regards to current fitness, you can index your own personal CTL to your current fitness. The data isn't transferable in any meaningful form to say "person A is faster than person B, because person A has a higher CTL". As in, if my CTL is 50 (To pick a number) - if I can get it to 51 I'll likely be fitter and probably faster in a 5k. If I can get it to 54, I'll almost certainly be faster. For someone else, their CTL might only be 40 to run the same 5k time as me. But again, relative to themselves, if they can get their CTL to 45, they'll almost certainly be faster. To get higher, you have to do some more work, relative to the sliding scale of what you have done previously in your training. So , for me, in simplistic terms, this makes total sense. Whilst there are some flaws and gaps in how an individual session for TSS is calculated, the good news I feel is that it seems to work very well, around this sweetspot level. This is again something I have picked up from cycling. I do feel like it probably underestimates a bit if you go by pace or HR, for the really hard running sessions, hills, vo2 max etc. That's the disadvantage of not having power.

As per your example. Let's take a basic 7 hour week and that fits pretty neatly. Let's use rough numbers (they aren't exact) but give a good ball park.

Runner 1 (you)

3 moderate runs of 50-55 ish mins 60 TSS per session. = 180 TSS

1 Daniels tempo half hour with warm up and down. 70TSS

1 easy active recovery run of say 40-45 mins. 30 TSS.

1 long run 80 mins. Easy 75 TSS.

8X800 around 5k pace with warm up and down. Around 60 TSS.

That gives you around 415 TSS for a week.

Runner B (me, this was literally my last week to use a real example)

3x 55 mins top end of easy around 52 TSS per run. 156 TSS

3x sub threshold runs around an hour with 35-36 minutes work + warm up and down 75 TSS per run. 225 TSS.

Long Run easy 75 mins . 73 TSS.

454 TSS for the week.

Whilst that doesn't sound like much difference, over time it will create a reasonably difference in overall training load. Probably enough to account for that differences in the 5ks I've set, for about the same amount of hours a week training. From a personal standpoint, also not having to run the Daniels straight tempo or especially the vo2 max stuff, also keeps me feeling fresher and less beat up in the legs. So the advantage is two fold.

We jumped on the VO2max bandwagon a long time ago as it’s something measurable and doing any structured training shows improvements as we are all aerobically under developed, however but it doesn’t bear much resemblance to actual performance outcomes. It shows the same vo2max you can run very difference times over time as you correctly say with the Paula example.

I’m sure at somepoint there will be an optimal pace and time based chart vs current ability over a time period.

When you started at 18:50 what was your sub threshold pace?