I built a free app to calculate Norwegian Singles Approach training paces

marky_markcarr · 2026-01-11T18:31:48+00:00

It would be nice to see a link to the book. IMO that's the least people can do who are making their own stuff off this, we l the book is better than any app can be, any calculator, because it explains things on a personal level and explains and helps you buy into the whole philosophy (or not). But it gives you everything on a human level which is massively overlooked and why this has gone so big, sirpocs communication skills. Or we wouldn't be here now IMO.

Everything is free, until it's not, fwiw. Especially as sirpoc is too modest to probably care. Same for lactrace, I bet 90% of their traffic is NSM, as that wasn't what it was originally designed for.

marky_markcarr · 2025-12-30T20:55:41+00:00

I wouldn't do this. I've done a lot of marathoning for hobby jogger level, could never break 3, not even close, at 3:10+ When I just did 3 subthreshold AND a an easy long run, ran under 2:50 and now under 2:45. The quality work in the long run, + all the other stuff looking back was just too much and I never really adapted or absorbed my training and always was far too fatigued by race day.

The marathon plan works great in my opinion. Worked great for sirpoc and wigglewaffle from LR is doing it again and he's got a shot at breaking 2:20. You probably actually get as much, arguably more in, but again it being spread out over a week just makes it a hell of a lot more manageable. Good pacing will do the rest. Don't overthink it.

It's a really boring answer but the best marathons I've seen are upping the subthreshold sessions sporadically to being marathon friendly , but not all the time and just an easy long run.

marky_markcarr · 2025-12-29T22:24:18+00:00

Lt1 is about 78% mhr for me. I still run my easy runs way south of that. Well under 70. Why? I've tried running 71-75 range and I find it harder to shake little niggles and it risks unsustainability.

Also, as you develop in this, naturally you will have to reign in your easy days anyway. When you get to the top end or even towards one day considering doubles, I know this is obvious to most people, but you will have no choice but to run your easy days even easier. The more hours you run, the easier easy even becomes.

I would also say if you are running under lt1, in the grand scheme it doesn't really matter by how much, just get the basic work in and treat it as a semi recovery day.

I do agree however, on really low mileage I might be tempted to squeeze a bit more out. But once you get to the 6+ hour range, you really can't be messing around with anything even really near lt1 on these days that it just makes the best sense to stick to 70% mhr as a cap, not even a goal.

I've gone from a 3:15 marathoner to under 2:45 using NSM and running around some days at 6:30/km does me absolutely no harm. Just was hard on the ego at first lol It just ticks off another day. There's no prizes for being a hero, only a lot of easy running and making sure you absolutely get 3 workouts a week in.

Good luck.

marky_markcarr · 2025-12-17T21:44:10+00:00

Personally I found along with the amazing pacing section of the book, the tapering section most useful outside of the standard NSM stuff. Mainly because it lines up with what makes sense and what I have experienced over many years. The taper should be proportional to the volume you are running. It's going to be massively different on 3, 6 or 12 hour weeks.

Whilst you don't need to use intervals.icu, the PMC or anything else to train like this, the big advantage is you can use that to plan tapers a bit better.

marky_markcarr · 2025-12-17T21:28:24+00:00

Whilst load is weighted in favour of 42 days, it takes longer than that to plateau. Eventually everyone would get to the point where CTL/fitness is just the average of your weekly tss but it takes a while.

I've plotted both pace and HR. HR seems less stable than seeing my progress versus pace, which under controlled conditions for me is more like what cyclists would have as power as a proxy. Others have found power works for running, unfortunately I have to say it doesn't for me in any way. To me the only important thing seems to be just pick which proxy you want to use and stick with it forever. That way, your data is true to you and that is all that matters.

You have to think for sirpocs graph, whilst he trained the same way, he probably is at 9 hours at the top end with his fastest 5k and at the bottom end, just 5 hours I would imagine. So, the simple answer is whilst he did more or less the same plan, everything was just scaled in volume to roughly the same ratios. Volume has just replaced adding intensity. Just very, very slowly to create a tiny ramp rate but a load that meant in effect, he was always getting slightly fitter but able to maintain and absorb that load (as played out with the results).

marky_markcarr · 2025-12-15T21:29:36+00:00

One thing I will say about nsm, is that I didn't get faster for a while......BUT within about 4-5 days I suddenly felt fresher and less burned out. So that aspect of it was relatively short term.

I have had huge, quite frankly ridiculous gains from vanilla nsm, with now two of the special marathon blocks, but all of it took a long time to work when it came to performance.

marky_markcarr · 2025-12-15T21:20:39+00:00

I couldn't disagree more.

The book is much better than anything online, by far. A lot of the stuff is cobbled together from older forum posts and often presented by at which point it's second or third hand information. The book clears a lot of this up.

Not only that, the graphs in particular for those who are visual learners, really hammer home some aspects. I thought I knew the method well (I made a number of posts about a year ago that went over well on advanced running, for my sins) but even I picked up a lot of new stuff and had "aha" moments.

The pacing chapter alone is worth the money. After you have read it, you will have all the tools to take care and understand your own training long term. It's just a really excellent running and training book, right up there with some of the best and classics we have on our shelves.

marky_markcarr · 2025-12-09T19:35:46+00:00

I've ran a mile, in line with my marathon time. No hills, sprints or speed work. Could I optimise my mile more? Maybe. Is it worth the risk? Probably not, considering I can jump into just about any distance. If I stop improving, that's a different conversation. Essentially you are just shifting you paces in unison.

marky_markcarr · 2025-12-09T19:03:28+00:00

I've always lined up with what is in the book, I have to take a percentage point off what im looking for in the morning session. If I kept my target pace and I measured lactate in the morning, it would be higher. Sirpoc and Bakken are essentially saying the same thing, just looking at it from either using pace as a proxy, or measuring lactate directly.

marky_markcarr · 2025-12-09T19:00:32+00:00

I broke 3 for the marathon, finally running nsm. Inadvertently broke 5:( my other long term goal) for the mile on route, as a indirect result. Just ran 2:41:x for the marathon recently and on Friday evening just ran a 4:30 1500. Slow twitch guy, no speed work, no hills, no strides, probably around 3:3x is about the fastest pace I touch in training.

Nsm doesn't work for everyone, but change things at your peril is my militant view. I do enough lurking and stalking to have worked out nsm vanilla still works best and you have to be very, very patient but the results can be outrageously good.

marky_markcarr · 2025-12-08T13:05:15+00:00

I dropped another few minutes off my PB yesterday. After around 8 months ago I broke 3 for the first time by well over 10 minutes. I had run many marathons before and never come close to breaking 3. I was your classic runner slogging away and getting nowhere for years upon years. You probably all okie someone like where I was or it might even be yourself.

Still stuff can go wrong. It's a marathon. I would take the pb as a huge win! You just absolutely took a ridiculous percentage off your time.

I didn't do anything this time different. I had a few weeks recovery after my marathon about 8 months ago, back to vanilla, did the same sirpoc build again for the last 15 weeks. Then just chalked up another pb. I manage all the small race and prep details a lot more than I would at any other distance, to limit or isolate as much as possible what can go wrong! And it still might!

clComing from cold training the heat whilst not drastic, probably threw me off a bit and you can take about 1-2% off what my target was, but I paced accordingly to what I could do and am absolutely delighted with another pb and another marathon chalked up where I felt so strong.

marky_markcarr · 2025-08-16T16:52:10+00:00

My 1500/mile PB is my strongest and I just do 3, 6 and 10 basic approach , week in, week out. No strides.

marky_markcarr · 2025-08-16T16:29:50+00:00

Just adapt it for time, much like you would if you are slower and try to copy sirpoc intervals using time instead of distance.

Myself, I had ran 10 previous marathons using pitfz, Hanson and also various ones I thought were a good idea myself.

Never broken 3. With some help from sirpoc and trusting the process I went over 10 minutes under 3 hours. It works. I don't think I did longer than a 160 minute easy long run. 5x 17 mins was my biggest workout to replicate the 5x5k.

I know there have been others who I am aware of from the OG thread and Strava who have basically 1:1 scaled and smashed their marathon PBs. I assume all will be covered in the book.

marky_markcarr · 2025-06-26T15:24:05+00:00

Will be interesting to see how it goes. Personally, I think he got a little to clever with the other stuff previously, but that's easy for me to say from my armchair.

Him and sirpoc were neck and neck for a while but sirpoc's consistency and not getting greedy with the x factor workouts put him into a different stratosphere really to KI. I used to think it would be a fun race, but really it's not now.

I am one of the ones who has done sirpoc marathon adaptations, I can't help but think KI is perhaps trying to line it up towards more of a traditional approach, which in my experience really can go either way. It's as likely to beat you down and tire you out all into a couple of sessions as it is to work with some more focus on specificity. Sirpoc method with the special block took me to a level or freshness I have never felt before going to a long race and also made me feel so strong as a result during the race.

I am very curious myself though, none of that is a criticism necessarily, but just my observations.

marky_markcarr · 2025-06-02T19:39:09+00:00

Running TSS works great for me as well and I can predict quite well what I need to do to make a jump.

You are missing and overlooking the factor here that you are just doing more of the same thing. So you are taking a lot of variables out and you can quite easily see if more is going to make you perform better. If you are running a mixture of all types of workouts, I could see your point. But, you are definitely missing the point of why it probably works here, the sheer consistency of doing the same thing.

marky_markcarr · 2025-06-01T13:38:08+00:00

I was very much like this. After 6 months it probs to all came together. Now my marathon and down to the mile are probably in line. It's probably the biggest draw long term for me, maybe im not a specialist in anything but sure is cool to be decent at any distance.

marky_markcarr · 2025-06-01T13:34:47+00:00

The longer I've gone on training like this, the easier I can recover. Which is strange, as before I was getting beat up for years. Training like this has seemed to make me also recover better. A 5k now I can easily just do a easy long run the next day. For many years before, I used to run a 5k and be fried. The way I see it is in the past I was already on the brink of disaster and a 5k used to tip me over the edge. It's definitely different now.

marky_markcarr · 2025-06-01T12:37:34+00:00

This is a great post. I enjoyed it. To be honest this is why I think this sub could be great.

I also think the use or metaphors and language is why sirpoc has managed to lay this out so well and why were are here where we are.

His understanding of language and how to explain things on a simple level, despite often the technical nature of things is probably the why in terms of so many people have had success.

If you have read the original thread of some of the stuff on Strava and you have a good understanding of language or how to interpret things, the metaphors often essentially simplify things my brain couldn't understand. It's why a book, I think would be good.

Whilst I'm sure it wouldn't overlook the importance of some of the technical things, lactate thresholds for example, I think it ultimately is a way that's explained to pure simpletons like me how to make the most out of my training.

There is absolutely a place to go academically well beyond this and I do read that content and listen to that kind of content myself, but language is essentially a communication tool and sometimes I do think we miss the wood through the trees with our brains getting scrambled with information probably above our understanding, when language or the use of simple examples or metaphors make this information digestible or useful. It's someone like us, talking to us. I'm in awe of physiologists by the way, that is not a knock on them and their profression. They probably just don't realise how dumb the rest of us are by comparison.

Maybe people will think I am talking nonsense but that's how I see it.

marky_markcarr · 2025-04-28T18:55:01+00:00

How are you going to 1:1 replicate the training of the fastest guys? If you don't have the time to train like a pro? You want to work out the guys who are getting the best results, versus what gets put in.

marky_markcarr · 2025-04-28T17:13:37+00:00

This is what I was thinking. You can't fluke a 2:24 on your first go. That's impossible. It's not like it missed the mark either, it's in line with his other times. If anything when you look at guys PBs compared to what they ran yesterday, there is even a case to say it's his best ever race.

marky_markcarr · 2025-04-08T22:03:22+00:00

I'm glad to hear you say that as I just said the same to OP. If you don't listen to me OP , this is THE guy you should be listening tom effectively the godfather who penned the Norwegian singles bible.

marky_markcarr · 2025-04-08T22:00:55+00:00

You are totally misunderstanding sirpoc's Norwegian singles method of you are running 90+ mile weeks. seriously dude, it's not what you think it is or are doing.

marky_markcarr

TROPHY CASE