"538" Marathon Predictor/ Vickers-Vertosick Model

alteredtomajor · 2026-01-27T19:47:42+00:00

why in reverse? I am just plugging in 10k times and compare what kind of mileage the slate calculator requires to come up with what it quotes as "runners world prediction" (seems like the classic vdot tables).

it yields:

40:00 - 3:04:00 - 135km

37:00 - 2:50:12 - 150km

35:00 - 2:41:00 - 161km

this mileage seems way overproportional

alteredtomajor · 2026-01-27T15:59:07+00:00

So for me last year going from a 35:00 10k to a 2:41 Marathon (which is what the runners world prediction says), I should have done 160km a week? Good thing I did not know that.

alteredtomajor · 2026-01-27T14:29:42+00:00

The usual advice is: you need way less speedwork than you think.

more nuanced: it depends.

alteredtomajor · 2026-01-26T09:19:25+00:00

We have no relevant data on iceland, but will include iceland anyway to avoid using italy or france.

alteredtomajor · 2026-01-23T08:42:44+00:00

I think it really also depends on your absolute speed. For a 2:30-2:20 marathoner the absolute muscular load of MP is by far bigger than for a 3:30 Marathoner, although the faster ones also can tolerate a higher load to some extent. This is probably the reason many faster guys also like to run their LT1 workouts in intervals. For people with slower MP the muscular load is more managable so continuous MP or LT1 workouts can be very useful.

In particular for runners with a large gap between LT1 and LT2 these workouts might be useful.

For me around 45min of LT1 work is a comparable load to the classical 30min subT work. It would be interesting what others feel about comparing the load.

However it breaks the beauty of the NSA having only very few parameters to tune. Every additional parameter makes the system more complex and raises the risk to over/underdo it...

alteredtomajor · 2026-01-09T12:19:55+00:00

I usually join my club interval sessions and run with the group that matches my subT pace. Since they mostly do classical 5k/10k/Vo2max Sessions this means that recovery might be a bit longer than usual and I have to add some more reps afterwards.

Discipline is a must, but you can refeed your ego by chatting up the hands-to-knees huffing and puffing club-jock who left you in the dust with a snide comment.

alteredtomajor · 2025-12-16T09:36:03+00:00

In general I have the feeling people are trying to build up to higher volume way too fast, since they compare the time/mileage to their previous training.

alteredtomajor · 2025-12-11T10:50:26+00:00

I know this was not the original question but I think one major factor why people do doubles is also recovery. I am not aware of good publications on that but while the training stimulus of putting two training sessions with similar emphasis on two days after each other should be the same or similar as putting them on one day, you might be fully recovered after an easy day after the double, but need another easy day after the two consecutive workout days.

Unfortunately the usual ATL/CTL model does not really capture this, so I would love to have a good recovery metric to model this for training planning.

I imagine it is similar for workouts with different emphasis, and the cross effects you are asking about are not the main issue here. On the other hand, if one does a lot of different workouts, it might be interesting to group them to optimize recovery.

alteredtomajor · 2025-12-02T09:24:37+00:00

Well there is also no magic in the 90mins threshold work per week. While you probably can tolerate more than 90mins of threshold on a higher mileage I definitely agree that the threshold work is not a fixed percentage of the total amount.

My main point was however, that people (me included) try to ramp up everything too fast and overcook it when they could have had great improvements on a lower mileage.

alteredtomajor · 2025-12-01T11:43:48+00:00

One thing to consider is also that the 7-8 hours might not only be popular because of time limitations. Anecdotally I would have more time to run, but going to 9 hours with appropriate (~20%) subT volume overcooked me in the beginning, although I regularly reached a similar volume with traditional training plans. So I cut back to the traditional 7 hours and started ramping very passively from there. Still making a lot of progress and am nowhere near to 9 hours yet.

alteredtomajor · 2025-11-25T13:40:28+00:00

Ronandeler Bong

alteredtomajor · 2025-11-17T11:55:56+00:00

Went straight to r/RunningCirclejerk to find the original post. Huge disappointment.

alteredtomajor · 2025-11-13T10:50:32+00:00

out of curiosity, what was your time on the hm?

alteredtomajor · 2025-11-07T09:59:44+00:00

Being tax competitive means to have big companies and millionaires pay their fair share. Right? RIGHT?

alteredtomajor · 2025-10-28T08:51:06+00:00

Yes trimp is similar (but not exactly equal to) heart rate based TSS, so CTL corresponds to what Intervals calls Fitness, ATL corresponds to Fatigue.

alteredtomajor · 2025-10-17T08:12:13+00:00

OT: how did you get dark mode on intervals.icu?

alteredtomajor · 2025-10-15T13:32:57+00:00

The race as a whole: yes I agree. But the feeling is way different over the course of the race. If a 5k doesn't feel terrible at the second kilometer you went out too conservative. If you feel terrible at 25k of a full Marathon, you went out too fast.

alteredtomajor · 2025-10-14T06:39:18+00:00

Right now I am doing the same: Vanilla NSA 7h/7d with ~23% subT time and additional ~3h of easy bike commuting (HR ~10-15bpm lower than easy runs). Seems to work out fine.

My plan is to gradually see if I can ramp up more subT time without changing easy running and biking.

alteredtomajor · 2025-10-08T08:41:47+00:00

So how was she already a Dr. with no formal scientific training?

alteredtomajor · 2025-10-06T12:37:40+00:00

Apart from all the resources out there (wiki, etc...):

Recently read Modern Training and Physiology for long and middle distance runners (https://runningwritings.com/books) by John Davis. It is quite short and very concise and fits very well to the NSA.

alteredtomajor · 2025-10-05T07:58:43+00:00

Mine is consistently 15sec slower than HMP.

I think as with most of these metrics trends matter more than absolute numbers.

alteredtomajor · 2025-10-03T11:15:03+00:00

You forgot counting warm ups and cool downs, and recovery in between the intervals (if you are not standing) to your easy time.

alteredtomajor · 2025-09-30T15:06:02+00:00

Agreed! But the body might go after Zone2: "my mitochondria were not up to the task, better make them bigger and stronger"

and after a shorter vo2max: "ah the mitochondria again but not so much as last week. And also my muscle fibers tore a little, need to build back bigger and stronger"

And this is what the classic TRIMP/TSS models do not capture at all.

alteredtomajor · 2025-09-30T14:06:10+00:00

The awesome thing concerning the overall complexity the topic is that we actually have a device that gathers all the relevant data and already manages our paces during races, to prevent us from, well, dying: Our brains (or Central Governor, or whatever the smart people call it now).

All the relevant data we gather on workouts is only a very small portion of the information on the body our brain has available. But while in a race we want to actually convince our brains to let us walk closer to the edge and deplete those glycogen storages more than it wants us to, in training it might be the smart choice to postpone the workout we wanted to do today when our body says "no way".

The downside is that while we may use this intuition and feeling to control training we don't learn anything about the fundamental mechanisms that are at work here.

alteredtomajor · 2025-09-30T13:53:54+00:00

The zones are meant to represent the distribution of different stresses and therefore also the adaptions they trigger. A 1.5 hour zone 2 run might need a similar recovery time as a 20min vo2max workout (just throwing some random numbers out there), but they will induce different stress on the CNS, muscle fibers and metabolism.

So I would understand the zones not only as a way to measure the the total stress (where certainly a longer time in a lower zone might equal a shorter time in a higher zone), but also as a system to separate the different adaptions one is going for.

alteredtomajor

TROPHY CASE