Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage

Quite possibly, just life factors? Saturday is only day for a hobby jogger who works Monday to Friday where you can squeeze the most it. But this is purely just a guess and he is in uncharted territory and just seeing what works and what does not.

Been following this thread. I did something simple - I started with Jakob's 'old' training :

Easy 10k twice daily
Subthreshold 5 x 2k (same as 6 mins for Jakob) twice daily
Easy 10k twice daily
Sub threshold 10 x 1k twice daily
Easy 10k twice daily
Sub threshold 25 x 400m twice daily

And for hobbyjoggers we agreed on one session a day. I have been running 50 years now so I just basically chopped everything in half - instead of 2k/1k/400m I do 1k/500m/200m. I used the tinman calculator to choose the slowest thresh times for my current fitness and I dont think for someone like me the easy days have to be running days - so I just walk.

I also have a unique situation that there is no flat ground near my house - I live in a bowl and everywhere is up to start. And finally most of the year like now with the snow - there is only ONE road I can train on So I just came up with the same 10k workout for EVERY SubThresh day :

10 x 200m 5 pct grade up

12 x 500m 2 pct grade up and down

2x1k 5 pct grade back down

60 secs of rest between each run

Doing the short little hops (200m) on the way up in the beginning and saving the long runs (1k) for the way back down works great. I also dont do long runs since my main focus is 800m and injury prevention. And since EVERY day is a hill day I dont need to do any xtra sessions of those either.

For the uphills I add a few seconds to the tinman times and for the downhills I subtract a few seconds - usually about 5 seconds per 200m seems to work good for the grades I am on. And finally I am retired and try to exercise outdoors every day so a 6 day schedule works a lot better for me. I used to take days off but I found that they just made me feel worse so I go every day now unless I get hurt or is some kind of emergency.

So its basically :

Day 1 : Walk an hour or so (about 7k)
Day 2 : Thresh session : 600m warmup / 10x200m / 12x500m / 2x1k / 600m cooldown

wash rinse repeat every 2 days

To ease into this I am starting with 4x500m (instead of 12x500m) for a total of 6k a session and plan on adding a couple of 500m runs each month until I hit the same 10k total as the Ingebrigtsens about 4 or 5 months from now - at the same time dropping my thresh times as my fitness levels improve.

Its working quite well. The biggest problem I have is forcing myself to run that slow - taking a while to get myself to SLOW DOWN. And second thing that has really shocked and pleased me is how much easier this feels than running this entire road in one stretch with no breaks - which is pretty much what my 'training' has been for years now. Running SubThresh with the 60 seconds rests basically takes almost all the pain out of running. Those 60 sec rests are like respawning in a video game to me and I feel really good at night after any of those thresh sessions are done.

And yes its boring but I dont mind that - I think all the Ingebrigtsen training is going to be boring no matter what u do - and in any case every day here is different - on that road last summer I ran into 2 bears and a cougar in just 6 weeks. So that keeps me awake LOL

I turn 65 a year from now and my goal is to be in the top 10 USA for 800m. I havent done a race in decades but I did an 800m time trial with my 17 year old son on the track and that time put me at 50th for age group 60-64 so I think this new training could get me there if I can stick it out for the next year or so.

Does anyone know if KI or sirpoc from those on Strava incorporates strides into their training program? I find it hard to believe sirpoc84 doesn't and it would be hard to take any training he does seriously, without something like this incorporated in it? What about gym work?

Sirpoc has said here and on strava that he does zero strides and zero strength training. Only time he runs faster than ~10k pace is if he’s racing shorter than 10k

don’t think I’ve ever seen strides on KI’s strava. He has started doing weekly hill sessions (20x300m, not short hill sprints/hill strides). He has posted some strength training sessions, but those aren’t very frequent or regular

Similar 5k PR to you and pretty much the same experience (even more aerobically deficient here). LT2 is noticeably slower than my 5k pace and LT1 is really slow too, to the point where my ego hurts running outdoors ahaha.

It lines up with what I suspected though, as keeping my HR below 70% during easy runs was nigh-impossible (well, not impossible, but my knees would hurt running at such slow pace - I thought it was weird I had to run so slow, now it makes sense) so I always used 80% instead.

Looking at sirpoc and KI leads me to believe it's not that important for hobbyjoggers like us, though. With that said, there's no harm in trying out some strides 2x a week. If you can recover properly and it works for you, no reason not to include them I think. Worst case you just stop doing them if you feel like you don't recover in time for workouts.

I am maybe old school, but why change a broken formula? Classic 5k pace work, strides etc is all well known to improve any runner. I can't help but think sirpoc84, KI etc could easily push to sub elite level and put or hobby jogger zone, by implementing this. Yes I have read the whole thread. It's interesting. Sun 1:15 is very, very impressive. But they might just be selling themselves short. It's also possible there is stuff we haven't been told. As in, we don't know the true nature of their training makeup to get to the point they are at.

I can assure you that in sirpoc's case: what you see is what you get.

Zero strides, zero speedwork and zero strength training.

Whether one finds that impressive or suspicious is just a matter of perception (and maybe a little envy? haha).

I follow Sirpoc on Strava, he does exactly what he said here, no more, no less. Currently his personal bests are 16:07 and 33:19 in 5K and 10K respectively.

These times are seriously impressive. That is a high standard here in the UK for a 40 year old. Would place you very high even in pretty decent level road races.

However, is this really all there is to it? I don't see how you can go from a stagnated runner around a mid 18 or whatever it is, to running a sub 1:15 half , low 33 and nearly a 16 flat. I just can't put all that together. From reading the thread, it's not as if these are beginners gains, as sirpoc had already built up to get to a mid 18.

Not a troll post guys, genuinely just curious.

You won't get answer, because these guys don't really know what they are doing. They're fumbling around in the dark, trying to explain things they don't understand. Anyone with two brain cells can see this is pretty mediocre training and they are actually handicapping their potential with this new fad of system in training. They are doing it right now, because it's cool. In 1 year the same names will pop up in another thread about how running 16x400 is the key suddenly to their improvement. The whole thread is a Fugazi.

We all seem to be happy with the way we are improving. Have a great day!

Actually this is nothing new, Renato Canova already explained it with an example here on Letsrun. You can read it at the following link:

There are also studies in which mitochondrial damage has been experienced from high volume of high intensity training.

I have been on a lower mileage copy of the Nordic plan.

This started 3 weeks ago and i am building up to the twice daily sessions (train to train, I don’t plan to get injured).

And even at this early date, I have some results:

- Z1 run has gone up from 8,8kmh to 9.5kmh.

- Threshold intervals from 12,5kmh to 13,2kmh.

- But I now have problems getting to my max hr zone, and I’ve lost about 5bpm of max hr.

i will continue increasing until I can do all the doubles, then decide if I need to add one 1/1 (or other high hr exercise) per week to the mix.

You think doing speed or VO2max work when you're aerobically limited will help more than spamming mileage and threshold work?

People forget that sirpoc was a near elite Time trial cyclist so has a huge engine. All he has now achieved is retrained that engine to running. Of course the rest of us can be jealous of his engine, but it is no more remarkable than the various other elite sports men/women who upon retirement from sport A become very good at sport B.

Now the key is whether he needed to do it the way he detailed in the thread. Clearly, he believes so and so do a lot of others, or was he about to have a breakthrough anyway and it is just coincidence that he suddenly improved, we will never know...

And then the second unanswerable question is would be have improved further doing a more traditional method. Again, he and lots of others believe not.

Except that he was on a more traditional method (Daniels) and stagnated around 18:5X for 5K, so how is it an unanswerable question?

The real unanswered (not unanswerable) question is whether the traditional training done while stagnating could have acted like a coiled spring released by switching to subthreshold training.

If that's indeed the case, the consequential question would be whether the spring effect is going to wane over time, necessitating reintroduction of some faster training sessions.

Has any person here switched from some other training style to the Norwegian approach, whether singles or doubles, and been consistent with it for 3+ months? If so, please report your experience and results.

That should give something to go on.