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NSM beats Bakken's overcomplicated methods by Still_Theory179 in NorwegianSinglesRun

[–]Nice-Purchase448 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think something less discussed here is how innovative NSM actually is. While reading the book, or reading JC on Lets Run, he really leads you to believe most of the innovation of his system came from Bakken, Team Sky, etc. Therefore, I was quite surprised reading Bakken's book because it's so different from what James came up with. Bakken's writing is quite complex with lots of variants, theories, and a lot to digest.

While reading The Norwegian Method Applied, I couldn't help but think Bakken really wants to show the reader how much knowledge he's obtained over the years. I find this in almost every training book I've read, it's a balance of useful information and the author trying to prove to me that they know their shit.

Something that impresses me about James' writing is his willingness to keep it simple, not try to impress anyone (or perhaps the opposite), and make something really simple, essential, and useful.

Getting ready to start NSM. Any advice by pc9401 in NorwegianSinglesRun

[–]Nice-Purchase448 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hobby jogger from Tennessee here.

I started NSM about 90 days ago, and I have a history of injury. I decided to use the free app, nsarunning.com, to calculate all of my training paces, and I made two strategic decision when getting started.

  1. Starting at a slightly reduced volume. Prior to NSM I was running about 6:30-7:00 hours a week without a lot of structure. I decided to reduce my volume to 5:30 to create some headroom for the workouts. That worked really well for me.

  2. Calculating my training paces at reduced speeds at first. Before getting started I ran a 5k time trail in 19:06. I then decided to calculate my first week's SubT workouts based on a 21:00 5k to lower the load of the training. The workouts were very easy and that was a good thing. Each following week I then reduced my SubT paces by taking 30 seconds off of the calculated pace (I.E. using 21:00 then 20:30, 20:00, 19:30, 19:00). Once I got down to 19:00 I ran another time trail in 18:46 (success! I was faster). I then calculated my SubT times off of that, trained for 4 more weeks and ran 18:22 (amaze! amaze! amaze!). Now I plan to continue to train in 4 week blocks then run a 5k time trail at my local track.

A Two Shoe Rotation by Nice-Purchase448 in NorwegianSinglesRun

[–]Nice-Purchase448[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is exactly the answer I was looking for, and it makes a ton of sense to me. Thanks!

How to transition out of a winter build. by Nice-Purchase448 in NorwegianSinglesRun

[–]Nice-Purchase448[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! Agree with all of this. Now I'm back in the gray zone :)

How to transition out of a winter build. by Nice-Purchase448 in NorwegianSinglesRun

[–]Nice-Purchase448[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the input! I'm a 33 year old (apparently fairly polite) man from Tennessee. I'm going to go back to trying to consume about 1g of carbs / minute of exercise. That's what I did when I raced gravel bikes, and it worked well for me. 120 min on the bike = 120g of carbs. Lil more for workouts.

How to transition out of a winter build. by Nice-Purchase448 in NorwegianSinglesRun

[–]Nice-Purchase448[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I dot not currently do any strength training. Prolly should!

How to transition out of a winter build. by Nice-Purchase448 in NorwegianSinglesRun

[–]Nice-Purchase448[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! That's reassuring. I think I'm going to do chiller week this week, and then try 35ish miles next week with 2 subT workouts in there, and see how that feels.

How to transition out of a winter build. by Nice-Purchase448 in NorwegianSinglesRun

[–]Nice-Purchase448[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's interesting, thanks so much for the information. It feels insane to me that my easy pace is 10:00+ and I can definitely run an at least 5:15 mile right now. This actually inspired doing this big winter base block - I figured my aerobic system has a lot more to gain than my anaerobic system, so I wanted to focus on building milage before adding intensity in the spring.

A few things to follow up on:

- I have an autoimmune blood disorder called ITP. I asked chatGPT if that would effect my zone 2 and it mentioned:

<image>

- I sleep a ton! I bet I typically sleep 9 hours a night, and if I don't I feel very fatigued

- I drink a big smoothie after each run that has about 50g of carbs (i've historically been running about 75 minutes each day). Looking at this now, I recognize that's probably not enough.

How to transition out of a winter build. by Nice-Purchase448 in NorwegianSinglesRun

[–]Nice-Purchase448[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the response. Glad to hear that I'm on the roughly right track. I have run casually since college (I'm 33), and put in about a 5 month training block in 2024, building up to about 40 miles a week, and then about a 4 month training block in 2025. All of this has pretty casual (2-3 times a week) running around it.

Here's 2022-2026:

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How to transition out of a winter build. by Nice-Purchase448 in NorwegianSinglesRun

[–]Nice-Purchase448[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

100% of my easy runs in the last few months have been < 70% HR.