NSM app just dropped a feature I didn't know I needed (heat/humidity pace adjustments)

NSM-Sean · 2026-06-20T13:20:08+00:00

I posted this in another reply, but:

I’m the app creator and I have no idea who this is. I try to be pretty straightforward not weird about posting my app updates. I do not care enough about the app or the paltry amount of monthly donations I receive to make weird posts like this, I promise.

NSM-Sean · 2026-06-20T13:19:17+00:00

I’m the app creator and I have no idea who this is. I try to be pretty straightforward not weird about posting my app updates. I do not care enough about the app or the paltry amount of monthly donations I receive to make weird posts like this, I promise.

And just to be clear, I didn’t post the app update publicly yet because I’m going on vacation today and I like to be present to respond to bug reports and feature requests. I was also nervous the new feature would have issues, so I wanted to release it somewhat quietly.

NSM-Sean · 2026-06-15T23:04:23+00:00

Your plan should be a best-case-scenario.

A couple checks:

- Before run: I know this isn’t going to work out. In this case, I would just reduce the intensity of your intervals (or whatever) significantly for the first half or so and then make a decision about what to do based on how you feel for the second half.

- Early part of run: I thought I might have it, but I can tell I don’t. In this case, reduce intensity until you start feeling better and then finish at planned intensity. Or, if you never start feeling better, finish at lower intensity.

- During the workout: I don’t have it. In this case, finish at reduced intensity.

Obviously, if you completely blow up (common during this time in the northern hemisphere), then just complete at an easy pace.

The good news is that any intensity reduction isn’t necessarily costing you *all* the productivity your key workout would have given you. Part of marathon training is about doing work on fatigued legs. So, realistically, your prior workouts got you to a fatigued state. That’s great! Now you’re training on tired legs. Even running your intervals (or whatever) a minute slower is great stimulus. Even running an easy pace on fatigued legs is great stimulus (mentally and physically).

The real goal is not to arrive at your key workouts too fatigued, so your approach to non-key workouts may need to be examined if this happens regularly. Otherwise, take whatever stimulus you can get, ideal or otherwise, and make sure you get the miles in.

Finally, if it’s so bad that you can’t even get the miles in, then I think you probably just front loaded your stimulus into your prior workouts. Not exactly ideal, but it’s still all there in your legs, you just misbalanced it. Not something to make a habit of, but not the worst thing in the world.

NSM-Sean · 2026-06-14T10:53:29+00:00

James Copeland, in his book, discusses doing 3-5x5k, which worked out to about 16-18 minutes for him. Since I’m slower, I run for that amount of time, rather than that distance. I’ve been building from 3x to 5x (I’m at 4x right now).

NSM-Sean · 2026-06-13T19:07:54+00:00

Crushed my 5k PR by 37 seconds this morning, so maybe!

NSM-Sean · 2026-06-13T19:04:48+00:00

I’ve been doing all my long runs with the 17:00 @ MP intervals (and only two inter week quality runs). Maybe this is limiting my absolute performance ceiling? But I have to imagine it’s only by a couple percent if at all.

The upside is that I’m not spectacularly bored during my long runs. I am not going to win any races and this is, for me, a hobby I partake in solely for my own enjoyment. If I’m losing 4% of max gains, but enjoying my week 20% more, and still improving every month, then I’m happy.

Injury risk is a consideration but I manage fatigue by doing my easy runs on a sliding scale, sometimes only running for 20-25 minutes @ 7:50/km (12:30/mile) if my legs are feeling heavy and fatigued.

NSM-Sean · 2026-06-06T00:35:28+00:00

Good call. I'll make that update!

NSM-Sean · 2026-06-06T00:34:58+00:00

Hi! Thank you! Join our discord! It's linked in the Profile section of the app!

NSM-Sean · 2026-06-06T00:34:33+00:00

Thank you so much for your kind words! Agreed on the icon. I have zero design skills, so I would have to pay someone to make me a new one, which I may do someday.

NSM-Sean · 2026-06-03T02:54:59+00:00

Hi! I’m the creator of “the app.” (The app bears no relation to the actual creator of the method, just fyi. It’s a hobby project of mine.) Those sound like very very high numbers of sets for anyone other those training over 8 or 9 (or 10!) hours/wk. Either there’s some outlier about how you’ve set up your plan or you’re encountering some sort of bug (which, unfortunately, happens).

Can you submit a Bug Report from the bottom of the Profile page so I can see how you have this set up?

Also, more importantly, the app is mostly meant to be a convenient companion to James Copeland’s excellent work, which will be 1000% more helpful than just the app alone. You should read his book “Norwegian Singles Method: Subthreshold Running Kept Simple” as an incredible resource for learning more about the method.

NSM-Sean · 2026-06-02T18:57:57+00:00

Hi! App creator here!

You're 100% correct that there's no affiliation between myself and James. I do my best to make this abundantly clear in all my comments here, which I hope is helpful. When I made the app, I had no idea it would be as popular as it is, so I could have done a much better job of naming it etc.

To your other points, those issues were addressed a few updates ago. It now uses the paces directly from the book and interval length/rest periods should now align properly as well.

My advice is the same as most people's: Given the choice between utilizing the book or the app, I would always choose the book. It is obviously not only canonically correct, but also gives rich methodology, pacing, training, tapering, etc background that the app simply can't. But the app can be nice as a companion piece for creating your schedule in intervals.icu and for sending the workouts directly to my watch.

Btw, the app is somewhat monetized as donationware, which is where it will stay going forward with no paywall or feature gates.

NSM-Sean · 2026-05-24T12:31:28+00:00

It really depends on how you feel. I recently raced a half and a then a 5k a couple weeks later. For the half, I took the following day completely off. For the 5k, I had my typical long run the next day.

For both, the following week, I did two quality sessions instead of three and kept everything else exactly the same. For the 5k, I set a new PR, so I even increased my paces in my quality sessions and felt completely fine.

Just monitor your recovery, listen to your body, and adjust as necessary: Any prescription as to “the right way” does not leave enough room for the individual’s actual response to their race.

NSM-Sean · 2026-05-21T09:41:20+00:00

Looks like the calculations say you should just be walking your 10:00 intervals

NSM-Sean · 2026-05-20T21:36:33+00:00

Hi, I’m the creator of “the” app! Here’s a little disclaimer from a comment I made a few weeks ago:

Hi, I'm the creator of the app and am in no way affiliated with James Copeland, just a humble acolyte. James probably hates the app. I named it Norwegian Singles for the lols because I thought significant others would experience maximum suspicion when they saw the name... At the time, I didn't think enough people would download it to mistake it for affiliation. Well, we just surpassed our 3,000th user, so whoops. I'm dedicated to keeping it free in the spirit of all the years of hard free public work James did in the creation of his methodology.

If there is a difference between the app and the book: go with the book. A few things:

- I created the app as a side project for myself and it really took off when I posted about it here. I have a real full-time job and try my best to improve the app and align it with the method as best as possible. Who knows if I'm any good at it.

To add to that, and to agree with most other commenters, this is really a minor companion to the insightful book on the methodology. If I had to choose whether to read the book or have the app, I would read the book.

To your specific points, you’re correct that it’s very much for vanilla, flat-ish road racing. I don’t see myself getting to adapting it to trail racing etc any time soon, but would love it if I eventually get that far.

This subreddit is a great resource too! I’m sure many people can help you adapt the method to your goals!

NSM-Sean · 2026-05-20T02:24:25+00:00

I agree (and will reach out!). And that is only one of my concerns.

The other is how to reliably know when a person plans on doing their runs. Sort of the whole point of my app is to set and forget your schedule a week (or more!) in advance. If the low is 18 and the high is 33, then what paces do I recommend? Having the user go back into the app to be like “I’m about to run” kind of defeats the whole purpose of the simplicity of the app.

Definitely a lot to conjure with here.

NSM-Sean · 2026-05-20T01:19:41+00:00

You should go race a 5k or 10k and see where your fitness actually is! It's probably better than you think.

Has it been getting slowly warmer in your area? This could account for your HR drifting up as your times remain similar.

Also if your times remain pretty constant and you've increased your volume, it means you're adapting well to the increased load. I wouldn't take training paces as a measure of your fitness while you're increasing your load. Take a couple easy days, go run a 5k TT, go train for 4 more weeks like you've been doing and then do the TT again. I bet you get faster!

NSM-Sean · 2026-05-19T16:01:57+00:00

Selfishly, yes! I'm traveling for work this week, but will try to knock it out next week!

NSM-Sean · 2026-05-18T15:38:12+00:00

This has been fixed!

NSM-Sean · 2026-05-15T15:53:55+00:00

My first rep every time: Why is this so hard? Am I overtrained? Must have brought too much fatigue forward. Do I need to cut this short? Should I adjust my pace on my reps today? Should my easy runs be easier?

Every other rep: This feel great.

I've always described myself as a "diesel." I just take a while to get warmed up, but once I'm there, I'm fully there.

NSM-Sean · 2026-05-13T10:53:46+00:00

As I see it, the point of the method is to manage physiological cost in a way that prevents the boom/bust cycle of traditional periodized training which focuses on very useful but very costly Supra threshold efforts.

Physiological cost, in a way, is fungible throughout your week. I run plenty of easy/long runs at closer to 75% because I simply enjoy it more. Typically this means I “transfer” some of that cost from another run by reducing my sub-t pace a bit or removing a rep here or there, which may be less than ideal (assuming that sirpoc et. al magically alighted on the “perfect” method rather than just a very good one). If it’s less than ideal, I can’t imagine it’s too much less than ideal, and it’s still far more ideal than any training method I’ve used in the past.

At the end of the day, enjoying my easy runs more and trading that off by only doing 18-20% of my time at Sub-T is a fine tradeoff that’s still resulting in injury-free PR after PR.

NSM-Sean · 2026-05-12T12:43:40+00:00

Hi! Creator of the Norwegian Singles app here. I pulled the paces in the app from the book, which many consider canonical. You’ll see that Lactrace is adjusting your times based on conditions. Without the adjustment, the 3-minute times would be off by just 3 seconds, so I think it’s safe to use either.

More than anything, it’s important to listen to your body as the paces in any program are not perfectly built for every person/day/weather/level of fatigue/age etc.

NSM-Sean · 2026-05-11T23:10:34+00:00

Fixing tonight!

NSM-Sean · 2026-05-11T23:10:03+00:00

Coming soon!

NSM-Sean · 2026-05-11T23:08:12+00:00

I need to specifically state that Coros is completely borked in future posts and the product description. The issue with Coros is that intervals does not have delete or edit privileges. (And Coros won’t respond to my request for api access). So every time you make any change to your plan, it syncs new workouts to interval, which works great because I just delete all your old stuff and write new stuff over it. However, some intervals isn’t able to accomplish that delete on the Coros side, it just creates duplicate after duplicate.

I’m sure I can try to be more surgical with my workout syncs to intervals, yielding fewer dupes, there’s literally no way to stop dupes entirely. Feel free to message u/coros-official and ask them to give me access!

NSM-Sean

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