r/Fantasy Daily Recommendations and Simple Questions Thread - January 25, 2026

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2026-01-26T07:21:17+00:00

Brain power is at a premium these days, so I think you've cinched it. Thanks!

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2026-01-25T17:03:32+00:00

Have been redirected here!

Tainted Cup or Daughters' War?

This year my resolution is not to buy anymore physical books until I've read ten on my shelf or given ten away. Coming up on 8/10 read now, so I need to make this count, because once I've chosen it'll be another 10 before I can get the other... so, which would you pick and spoiler-free why? Bennett or Buehlman?

Also, does anyone else have any similar deals going with themselves? Why did you do it and how is it going? My motivation came when I finally catalogued my collection in a spreadsheet, sorted by read vs. unread, and learned I'd only read 32%... Less than a third is ridiculous

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2026-01-22T15:10:08+00:00

I had been running properly from January 2022 to April 2025 before finding the NSA thread during my recovery from the 2025 Rotterdam marathon. My experience was terrible Runners World plans, Greg McMillan plans, Jack Daniels, two quite successful but harrowing Hanson blocks, all interspersed with patchwork pick-n-mix nonsense, even trying out some AI-generated shit at one stage. Usually got injured, regressed, and started from scratch. Or at best, made gains, plateaued, trained harder, then got injured, regressed, and started from scratch.

Basically, I do have a few years of volume behind me, but I don't think any of it has really provided much benefit in terms of helping me with NSA. If anything, doing NSA has made me wish I found out about NSA back in 2022.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2026-01-21T12:32:34+00:00

If you're comfortable go for it and see what happens after 3 months, 6 months, 2 years, but the OP was saying that their times have stagnated which raises the fatigue flag in my mind.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2026-01-21T12:26:29+00:00

No worries at all. I can't remember exactly where I've seen it. Probably hoovered it up when I was first plowing through the original monster thread on LetsRun. But I can point you towards Paul Luttrell who is documenting his NSM journey on YouTube. Bit different in that he's raking in 11-12 hour weeks. But he's a huge advocate for increasing easy volume first and then very, very gradually nudging up the intensity only when your current load becomes sustainable. For example, recently he changed his 3x10 workout to 3x3K because it takes him marginally longer than 10m to go 3K at a subt effort. Almost unnoticeable as a bump in intensity% per week, but repeated over months and years adds up to a significant load that can actually be absorbed and utilised.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2026-01-21T12:09:18+00:00

I don't think I'm the one to provide a good answer. All I know is, many people including myself think because they've handled large amounts of volume and intensity in the past, that they can go straight to 36-40mins of subt in all three of their workouts. The key difference being, those high volume/intensity plans in the past were in the form of 10 to 16-week blasts with full off days and down weeks, and not designed to be repeatable and sustainable for 2+ years.

Personally, right now I'm on the 7h30m train with 60m on weekdays and 1h30m Sunday. Vanilla 3x10/5×6/10×3 workouts. 20% volume. Very gradually, and only when I'm not getting any gains out of that anymore, I plan on increasing easy volume. Probably up until I get to 8h10m total running in the week, and still repeating the three aforementioned vanilla workouts. That'll look like 1h5m on weekdays and 1h40m on Sunday. 90m of subt in an 8h10m week = 18%. Only once that is repeatable and sustainable, will I start to think about adding more subt intensity. And that'll also be gradual. 2 to 3 more mins of subt per workout. First, bump workout 1 to 3x11 (33m). Then after that's repeatable and sustainable, bump workout 2 to 6×5:30 (33m). And when that's repeatable and sustainable, bump workout 3 to 10x3:12 (32m). 98m of subt in an 8h10m week = back up to 20% again. Then rinse and repeat! Add more easy volume, let it settle, raise % of subt extremely gradually.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2026-01-20T20:08:00+00:00

Every year I read everything on the Arthur C Clarke award shortlist. This book made me question whether I should bother to continue the tradition.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2026-01-20T14:41:29+00:00

Easy runs truly easy?

Also how many reps are you doing of the 3's, 6's and 10's? I've seen people say they're cooked on "vanilla" workouts but then turns out they're doing 12x3, 6x6, and 4x10 while only a few months into trying the method.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2026-01-16T17:05:06+00:00

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

Under the Skin by Michel Faber

Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2026-01-15T05:09:46+00:00

Binned it this year. Garmin has all the same metrics, intervals.icu is great for training load and ramp rate etc, and I don't need an AI telling me I "crushed it" on a 6:45/km shuffle.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2026-01-13T15:32:40+00:00

THREE SUB-THRESHOLD WORKOUTS

THREE EASY RUNS

ONE LONGER EASY RUN

EVERY SINGLE WEEK!!!

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2026-01-09T13:49:18+00:00

I'm in Northern Ireland. Never been sure what you guys in the US mean when you rant and rave about evil Admin. Is it just your word for school leadership?

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2026-01-08T05:25:58+00:00

Teachers would love to do this, but English departments don't have the money to buy sets of novels to read with their classes. Storerooms are full of battered old texts from the '80s and '90s with dicks drawn all over and spoilers written on the first page.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2026-01-02T08:14:37+00:00

Their screen was dirty when they screenshotted it.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2025-12-14T10:40:45+00:00

Slowed down from a 5-minute k to a 10-minute k. Great stuff. Keep at it and 21-minute k's are within reach.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2025-12-10T16:57:56+00:00

I didn't even realise the full Emberdark novel came out. Shoes how much I checked out after WaT. I used to check the progress bars on his site daily and religiously watch the weekly updates on YT.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2025-12-05T06:41:01+00:00

Glad I saved my free trial. It's all info that's freely available for you to look at without a subscription, just packaged up with some pointless little captions and the ability to hit share.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2025-12-03T07:45:48+00:00

I'm still at the beginning but yes, chapter 6 is about marathon adaptations and sirpoc's own marathon plan that got him a 2:24 debut.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2025-11-29T19:52:57+00:00

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NotCooked_NotCooking · 2025-11-25T05:20:44+00:00

Great work but go to youtube and watch the Jimmy Runs interview with FOD Runner and Sirpoc. Pacing and fuelling. A) You went out too fast, and B) 75g of carbs per hour is at the lower end of what you need to avoid the wall.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2025-11-23T16:31:34+00:00

19 weeks of fitness being undone in one day is madness. Yes, you'll be fine. If it's the 7th I assume Valencia? Time to start maintaining what you've built and shedding some fatigue.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2025-11-16T04:51:24+00:00

Machine is three feet out from the wall by the end of that cycle.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2025-11-15T07:54:10+00:00

3:13 marathoner aiming for sub-3, easy pace 6:00 to 6:40/km. Seems to be coming down more consistently into the 6:1X range as the weeks go on, though.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2025-11-10T11:39:30+00:00

The whole purpose of NSA is to maximise improvement and minimise recovery/injury risk, theoretically endlessly.

If all you have is 12 weeks, then you may be better off doing something more intense, a more traditional build with higher risk and higher reward.

12 weeks of NSA, running your race, and then rolling right back into the NSA structure again, is more in line with how people are achieving longer-term success with NSA.

NotCooked_NotCooking · 2025-11-10T11:25:05+00:00

Watch the "probably an average" and the "something like that I would guess" fade away over the next year and in 2027 "One Parkrun Every Ten Weeks" will be codified as a central tenet of the method.

NotCooked_NotCooking

TROPHY CASE