Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Good morning everyone. I just thought as this thread dies down I would add my contribution. I have been doing this since maybe the first page and have had real breakthroughs and PB at 5k and 10k. I've finally broken 19 for the 5k and it just has suddenly clicked into place. It took maybe 4 weeks for me to feel a bit fresher doing three lots of sub t a week, but now I'm doing no vo2 or speedwork my old legs feel so much better. On top of that, PBs to boot! I was shocked to be honest, things all started feeling easier after that 4 weeks and then around another 3-4 weeks after that I was suddenly up a level. One big shout of to sirpoc. Top guy, I reached out to him for some help and he was more than happy to help. In fact, has given me my next 4 weeks training to help me slowly push my training up. I even know what CTL is now! Can't thank him enough. I think in some ways he's too modest here, to really lay this approach out for us all. And congrats to him on the PB, he is now really not too far off KI in the for the king of Norwegian singles hobby jogger approach lol

As others have said, not to leave out the likes of shirtboy, jiggy and hard2find. Even lexel at times, just wish he wasn't so stubborn with his pointless stance on CV. Takes away from his posts which outside of this, is quite useful. Even coach JS appearance from time to time never ended up spoiling this thread, a LR chat first!!

Wifey dragged me into Emergency Room today: 6 weeks after restarting running training (and a bicycle tour this summer) and still a bit overweight from home office lifestyle: Lo and behold, resting heart rate at 44 and even 48 when standing.

I am sceptical how to interpret "bigger ventricles than usual" because there is no reference sonogram from decades ago.

If it is the focus on (sub) threshold sessions after a hiatus, or something else: I'll see...

+1

I would like to chime in on this great thread both as encouragement to you guys to continue and to add another data point.

I used this "Time crunched, low mileage, Norwegian-Inspired" method in 2021-22 to run a 4:40.4 mile (track) and 17min 5k (road) at age 40 after taking 20 years off from competitive racing and dedicated running.

Those were the only two races I ran--the 5k in November 2021 and the track mile April 2022. After becoming fascinated reading about the Ingebrigsten and Bakken method, and how radically it differed from my HS and college "All-out, all the time" training, I decided to try it out myself and target a mile race at age 40 as a personal experiment/ curiosity project.

Background fitness: last college track season 2003. Racing weight 160 lbs. College coach system:

Vo2 max intervals on Tuesday (Huffing and puffing after each rep, long rests, basically as fast as you can complete each rep) example: 5x mile.

Shorter, faster reps on Thursday with long rests. Again, each rep as fast as possible. Example 10x 300m.

"Tempo" run on Saturday. 4 miles. AKA a 4 mile race for all but the top guys.

"Easy" runs Mon, Wed, Fri. 8-9 miles, getting to 6:00 pace and staying there.

Long run Sunday, 15 miles, 6:00 pace.

Minimal exercise 2004 to 2015--work, wife, kids, etc. = 200 lbs dad bod. Recreational cycling 2015-2020 (three to five times per week with fellow middle aged dads). Not competitive cycling like Sirpoc, but spirited MAMIL riding. No power meter, intervals, etc. Annual cycling mileage during these years: 2400, 4800, 2900, 3600, 1800, 4100. This got me down to 185-190 lbs and much better cardio fitness than the previous decade. During these years I would run 0-2 times per month, usually three miles progressing from 8:00 at the start to 6:00 by the end.

Decided to start the running project in earnest November 2020. Treadmill 3-4 nights per week. 4 miles at 8:00 pace. December 2020 increased to 5 times per week. Kept the same 20 mpw at 8:00 pace on the treadmill through March 2021. Bought a GPS watch with wrist HR March 2021 with the idea the point of this device is to LIMIT my pace and HR. Total mindset switch from my youth. By watching food intake, got under 180 lbs.

First outdoor run with watch late March 25, 2021: 4 miles, avg 7:47, HR under 150 bpm always. April was spent gradually increasing average run to 6 miles. The word "threshold" shows up in log for the first time April 27, 2021--4 x 2:00 with 1 minute rest at what I felt was "comfortably hard", around 6:00 pace. At this time I decided I had better define my paces better, so I ran an all out 1 mile time trial on May 3 in flats on a hardpacked dirt road--5:15. I then used the online Tinman calculator and plugged in 5:10 mile as the reference, figuring a race on a track in spikes was worth 5 seconds. Spent May to October 2021 trying to build gradually and avoid injury, eventually finding the regimen that fit my work/kids schedule:

Mon: Threshold

Tuesday: easy

Wednesday: OFF

Thursday: Threshold

Friday: easy

Saturday: easy

Sunday: "long" aka usually 10 miles; minimum 8, max 12miles.

My threshold sessions were most often intervals of 3:00 (min 4 reps, max 8), 4 x5:00, or 2-3x 10:00. The rest was ALWAYS 59 seconds--to make sure I kept the intensity low enough that instead of panting and wishing for more recovery as in my youth, I was raring to go by 60 seconds.

My easy runs were NEVER allowed to go faster than 7:00, usually above 8:00. I often did 10 x 6-8s hill sprints/bounds after these easy runs.

Long run usually averaged 7:00 pace.

The most important points about this training was how EASY it was, and the complete lack of DREAD. Unlike my youth, no need to get psyched up for the workouts, and no no need to dread the gut-busting next interval because there is no gut busting with this system.

Time for bed now, but if you guys are interested, I will post my exact log with workouts and weekly mileage.

I read most this thread, I suspect that you ran your long runs too hard. 7:00 is way too hard for this system. This became your defacto third workout. System proposed here that KI and guys in this thread follow, long run is really easy as well and then you don't leave work on table and you can do threshold X3. The Strava club guys created is interesting to look at, you will understand when you see it. I think the guys some pages back showed the long run really easy work but then the 3x threshold will create in theory more training stress.

In hindsight, I 100% agree with you. There were definitely times my legs felt a bit tired on the Monday threshold session. If I had it to do over again, I would stay above 8:00 on Sunday as well.

Those Sunday "long" runs were definitely when I was least disciplined with the pacing. Reviewing my log, they would start above 8:00 and sometimes be 6:40 by the end, averaging to 7:00. This is the dreaded hobby jogger "gray zone" where I was going too fast to feel truly fresh for the next day, and too slow to be making gains. I totally agree with Bakken where he says to basically avoid everything between truly easy and threshold.

It takes discipline to know that going 8:00 is getting all the benefits of volume and none of the downsides of going faster.

It is just so easy to fall into that feeling of "cruising" 6:30s or whatever is one's personal moderate pace.

Another factor in current training and my experiment that I forgot to address: super shoes/foams.

This was such a striking difference from the last time I was training in the 1990s and early 2000s. For the distance I was targeting--the mile--I don't feel the difference was so much in speed but in how incredibly fresh the super foams leave your legs in training, most noticeably for me in the calves and achilles.

For my 10 and 5 minute threshold intervals I would wear the nike streakfly or the adidas takumi sen. For my 3 minute intervals I would wear the nike dragonfly spike. It was amazing to run a session like 8 x 3:00 threshold with 1 min rest in SPIKES and feel absolutely fine that day and the next. No soreness in the lower legs at all!

Doing a session like that, or any track session really, in my early 2000s Kennedys or ventulus would have left my legs trashed.

I also tried doing some of my easy runs in the nike zoom x invincible, but they were so huge and clunky I didn't like them and did most of my easy volume in a "normal" trainer like a saucony kinvara.

I think these foams allowing such superior recovery can not be overlooked as a factor in this model of cramming as much threshold in the week as possible without breaking down, and certainly contributes to why people from HS to pros are so fast now.

Nice to see the thread going, I haven't logged in for a while.

Very happy with a new PB of 16:55. Feel like on a fast course could be easily into the 16:40s.

One thing I will say, is the debate is fantastic , but keep it simple. If you don't or won't or can't use a lactate meter, I still stand by the paces roughly I started with posting. I've helped a good few people out, the reps from 1k(3-4 mins) up to 3k+ (or 10 mins) seem to be working the best.

As long as you know your current fitness, a good starting point is still 1k reps at no faster than 15k pace, 1600m reps at a fraction slower than 10 mile pace, 2k reps at HM pace up to 25k pace - and 3k reps around 25-30k pace. This as a starting point. You might find it shifts a little per individual, but having helped a few people now, I don't think those as a starting point, has sent anyone into the crazy spheres of being trashed. Obviously the number of reps is important, but stick still to around a max of 25% sub Threshold over the 3 days ( in terms of time in zone) of your total weekly volume. So if you are doing maybe 5 hours a week, but then you start trying to run 10x1k , you'll obviously wreck yourself. 5 hours a week, would be 75 mins total spread across 3 workouts, 5.5 hours would be 82-83 mins, 6 hours 90 mins- and so on. Less than 5 hours, probably isn't going to work. There's probably a cap on doing this in singles, that's probably 8+ zone.

Easy runs still cap at an absolute max of 70% MHR to make it even more simpl, rather than starting to talk about MAS.

If you want to begin and just try this out for 4-6 weeks, I honestly don't think you need to over complicate it more than this as a pure starting point. Considering we are 50 pages in, that's still relatively simple. Once you get past that stage, then maybe start to dig around in the weeds and tweak things a bit or looking into the training metrics and stuff talked about. But give it a good month to 6 weeks without worrying about anything too much than just following the basics.

Edit: one other thing, "Fusio" has made the group on Strava, I don't even know how to stare the link to stuff like that, but there's a good number of people on there and it's already proved useful with some guys and gals sharing snippets of things.

I did my threshold sessions in the 1990s on dirt roads. My legs were never tired afterwards.

Re-starting my running training I can relate to that in a special way (in my mind I have way too fast splits).

My approach is: Run the easy runs at the lake with the "joggers", and trail one of them. There's always one (in the distance) to follow. I was actually surprised with what slow HR I /can/ run! (Thought my economy was much worse.)

I can only agree with sirpoc84 here. It's best to work according to the KISS principle. For myself, I've found that if fitness isn't increasing as quickly anymore, it's better to slightly slow down the pace and add a repetition to increase the volume of stress instead of running faster. I've also had good experiences with a once-a-week workout, where I do a continuous tempo run without interruption. This run is at approximately marathon pace.

This has been a great discussion to follow. I’m looking for a small improvement to my 2.45 (@3.55/k) marathon and willing to try the method as i havent been really improving this year. Usually doing 90k+ a week. Could something like this work as a basic training week for a marathon?

Mon:rest

Tue:10-12k very easy

Wed:10x1km @3.45

Thu:10-12k very easy

Fri:5x2k @ 3.50

Sat:10-12k very easy

Sun: long run 30k=21k very easy +3x3km@3.50..3.55

My focus is only on the marathon so the long run would be more specific for that purpose. It would be a combination of a 3x3k workout and easy 20k run that KI has done during his Hm training. This long run would be followed by a rest day+easy day as above.

Do your workout on tuesday and thursday, your 3x3k do on satursday, sunday do easy Long run 15-20 miles. That's it. 3-4 weeks before marathon run hard 10k-21k and i think u got this

Thats Q, E, Q, E, Q, L, R,

a very good distribution for a 6 days/week single unit training.

This would be ideal and I will definitely try it. However 3xQ+L is a bit tight to fit in my weekly schedule so thats why i ended up with my plan where LR includes some threshold in the end. Would be nice to know experiences if somebody has tried something similar on marathon build-ups. Easy runs i do whenever i can, sometimes quite late evening/early morning.

First off, thanks to all for perhaps my favorite thread in all of LR. Really cool to see thoughtful discussion of training with minimal detritus to distract. I’ve never posted on LR before and don’t plan to post anywhere but here. Tis nothing but an honor to be this thread’s thousandth post.

I’m in the middle of a marathon training block and don’t want to deviate too much so I’m putting off my sub-T deep dive till after NYC. I do have one question before the thread dies off completely: has anyone here experimented with mixing/matching paces and rep lengths within a workout to provide different stimulus without sacrificing the core principles of this philosophy? I.e. 3k @ a little under HM pace 2:00 rest, 3x1k @ 12-15k pace 1:00 rest, 8x400 @ 10k pace 0:30 rest