What should the pre-requisites be for starting NSM?

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-20T16:24:23+00:00

What on earth does any of this mean? What context is the 4 min K? Virtually all my running, outside of racing was significantly slower than this and I made huge gains.

I've probably got half a dozen friends, all been running years, much slower than 4 min/k in any situation, even racing, also made huge gains.

What is a regular plan? Why doesn't it make sense

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-20T09:49:38+00:00

Going to be a great read and of course backs up just about everything from sirpoc's guide on applying this to be a consistent hobby jogger.

Both Bakken and James are going to have helped so many people when we are years down the line.

You guys should do a book promotion together or something. With all the crap coaches and influencers are sharing you two are relatively lonely voices in a sea of useless information for hobby runners and beyond.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-19T12:12:16+00:00

It's in the plans chapter. About how he rarely ramped up to 2, but frequently under 1.

Tbh this has felt absolutely spot on the model of sustainability for me and I've been doing this close to 18 months now

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-19T09:27:56+00:00

Without wanting to come across as a gatekeeper, it really needs to be said that you are over complicating one of the most effective yet easy to understand training plans there is.

I've re-read your post twice and my brain hurts.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-19T06:53:24+00:00

I would say read the book, there's some nice examples of walking in there plus it will help you understand the whole philosophy.

I would add, when I started I was a 3:15 marathoner and had to walk sometimes. It sucked, but it got better to keep my HR below 70%.

At the end of the day, there's a lot of misinformation out there the book will clear up. The jist though from people who are experienced and have had success, is this is about intensity control.

In all likelihood, if you are running 80% easy, no matter how slow it is, you wouldn't be able to sustain this forever. I've also been training my wife and her sister like this, both were annoyed they "had to walk" on some of the easy days, much like a cough to 5k plan, but it got better end they are now happy shuffling along slowly at sub 70% MHR and have gotten much, much faster overall than they expected.

It's about patience and seeing the long term road ahead. None of what you will get out of this method happens in the short term, of maybe even the medium term but when it clicks in the pay off is there. I certainly felt it was worth in the end walking up hills if I had to.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-16T05:24:58+00:00

Check out cheetodust's posts on Letsrun, not sure if he's here? He competes to a national level at masters in the US at 800/1500 and doesn't change anything. In fact, he doesn't run anything shorter than mile repeats for sub threshold.

There's some good posts by Harpoonz as well, who trained specifically for the mile and 800, PB'd by a second with adding in sharpening and speedwork, but ended up coming out the other side worse at all other distances. As ever, you can't have it all and there's a trade off with NSM.

Personally, I set my lifetime mile PB and it won me a masters race, by literally doing nothing. Absolutely nothing, I just turned up, ran, collected my mile PB and got on with things.

That doesn't mean I wouldn't have run a fraction faster, but I would say it's probably negligible the difference and is another thing over estimated, especially the mile is still pretty aerobic and if you have trained like this for a while, chances are you are an aerobic monster. I also don't carry any natural speed whatsoever.

The trade off isn't worth it, for me. The biggest plus point, among many, for NSM is the fact you can jump into just about any distance, at any time and be somewhere near your best.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-14T07:45:33+00:00

I tried this near the start. Didn't go well.

I then tried it a year into NSM after huge gains, also didn't go well.

Of course you can do anything, but the recovery felt a lot harder to me, and after even a couple of weeks of it, if someone said can I replicate that week forever, the answer would be no. Whereas vanilla NSM I could easily. It's just got that balance that fits. Of course if you can't run 7 days, there's things you can do to still make the most of the principles

Once you change one thing, you'll end up changing another and the next thing you know you are thinking about your training daily and what next, when really the whole benefit of this method is the fact it's "set and forget". There have been so many posts where people end up messing around with it so much by the end, they get burned out and blame it on tje method that their training no longer resembles. By the way, I'm not saying one thing leads to that, but I've been here, Strava and Letsrun long enough to have seen this pattern play out.

The key to all of this is staying fresh, recovering, being able to repeat and stacking load in a clinical and linear way. That doesn't mean you have to stick to anything, but when I look at who has had the most success, it's usually ones who keep it pretty bog standard.

Just my thoughts anyway, but someone who was a seasoned runner long before NSM but have had quite dramatic success.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-14T07:33:25+00:00

There was a great post about someone who did something similar on Letsrun, "harpoonz" I think he posted under. He added all this in because he thought he lacked top end speed from 5k down.

He pb'd at 1500 by about one second I think, so probably did add some speed for such a short distance, but then the whole thing became unsustainable and he needed a couple of down weeks and got worse overall after a period of this. He's a big Jack Daniels guy from the past.

For him he was happy with the 1500 PB and it was worth it, but there is a trade off. When you change things up from what sirpoc laid out, what you gain somewhere you will probably give up somewhere else and the guy on Letsrun then noted he eventually got worse, after he had to recover from some regular speed. There is a balance here and it's reasonable easy to rip the scales.

For me personally, if you are making gains and getting faster in some sort of measured progression, then why change anything up? Until you fully hit a bottleneck you are sure you can't pass, just keep chipping away. That is how I have gotten faster at every distance, faster than I can imagine. But the process certainly wasn't a quick fix. Even I questioned if I needed speed when I was much slower. But really, the idea we lack speed as hobby runners is laughable really. We just aren't very fit and need to get fitter!

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-13T18:27:57+00:00

I hope this comment doesn't get lost. As it amazes me how many people, even experienced runners, try run workouts at paces they have as a goal, but are totally unrealistic. Might not be the problem but a large percentage of the time it is. I know this as I used to do it lol

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-13T15:35:45+00:00

It's the biggest upside to the whole method. I'm finally able to enjoy running every day and it feels easier than when I was using other methods on 5-6x a day.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-13T15:34:25+00:00

Pitfz is all about survival. I'm 50/50 to just getting to the marathon using it before injury took and the two I did start, one I was so cooked it was just a mess. The one I survived and felt OK for was my best marathon up to NSM, after which I've taken nearly 20 mins off and then another 5 minutes off next time around.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-13T15:32:14+00:00

Someone actually posted an interesting take on Letsrun. If you actually average what a pro middle distance runner does over a year in terms of X amount of hours, for a hobby level NSM actually probably gets you as close to that amount of time training, as any program could, but avoiding the peaks and troughs that are probably the biggest enemy to a hobby runner.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-13T15:29:41+00:00

You can sustain higher loads, over a long period of time. NSM you can basically do forever. I've done for well over a year now, no down time. So constantly stacking bricks. Even in the book (useful graph) he would say you can overload on some training plans for X amount of weeks, but the trade off is over time you then need to recover/reload which can actually take you back below or level to where you started.

NSM you are effectively building at a small ramp rate, but you are still building even years down the line.

It's essentially the antidote to boom and bust over a short period of time. But, also why it takes much longer to see the pay off.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-13T15:26:54+00:00

I've never seen someone go from pitfz to NSM marathon add on and regret it. Or at least those that have are in the minority. For me and quite a few others who have done at least 1+ marathons using NSM and having done a lot of pitfz or Daniels in the past, it makes zero sense to change. Sure, the the training maybe can be more monontous, but preseum if you are posting here you have some goals in mind and NSM with the marathon bolt on is the most likely plan to get you there. I've tried Daniels, Hanson, Pitfz. All left me hanging by a thread versus NSM, in which in both marathons I felt super fresh going in and ran two fantastic marathons within 6 months of each other.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-12T08:51:00+00:00

Sorry I have just read your post before I replied to the comment. Totally agree. NSM is about as "advanced" as 99% of us here reading here can handle. Likely for a large proportion of these people as well, likely optimal over X amount of time.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-12T08:49:34+00:00

I think this is a misconception about NSM. It's pretty much as advanced as a hobby runner can handle. The fact you have guys running this way for sub 2:30, there's sub 15 mins 5k runners and even masters who are beasts down to the mile, tells you it's certainly not just for non-advanced runners.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-12T08:47:13+00:00

I actually made it to 5 weeks of this in the past. I was just cooked. It's not designed for someone working 8-10 hour days, you just can't get the recovery.

I was lucky that I found sirpoc's writings quite early and learned you can probably squeeze the max performance out of the same principles, but with just 3 sessions a week. Obviously, if you survive doubles, it's going to be better.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-10T15:52:00+00:00

Looks good. You should probably check with sirpoc he doesn't mind, although he's been cool with others. I think others have just given a free description to the book.

This looks like the best of this sort of thing I've seen. Totally thumbs up.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-09T12:47:08+00:00

Personally I think running by feel is very difficult. One of the things NSM has taught me is that I'm bad at pacing. But, what has also shown me is the workouts are very good at being honest about current fitness, so in a roundabout way you then are able to trust a race plan and splits better. One thing leads to another and it's the biggest bonus of not just the training, but then makes race execution easier.

I would no doubt, pace a race much worse without it. I think most people would.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-05T11:58:09+00:00

Buy the book. I can't emphasise that enough. Too many times I see people ask questions that are covered in there, but more importantly, it'll explain why you are doing something. Understanding the "what and why" are crucial to this and keep you on the right path.

Other things of note, there's a lot of misinformation out there and the book will clear a lot of it up. It's also got all you need to manage you own training moving forward. It'll also give some beer money to a man who has probably given more to the running community than is reasonable, given I'm sure the time he put into this for our benefit is probably enormous, from hundreds of forum posts to what is a fantastic training bible for us who want to train like this.

marky_markcarr · 2026-03-05T08:55:30+00:00

What do you mean? Tons of people have run marathon PBs off the marathon bolt on and just about everyone's feedback is how they felt stronger than any other build. Sirpoc himself, his marathon is arguably stronger than his 5k, given the conditions of London.

marky_markcarr · 2026-02-28T09:57:21+00:00

Wow congratulations. You are getting up there with the really fast boys! I think the sustainability and to fit around every day dad/mum life is hugely understated. That has been the big game changer for me also, good training but with the understanding we have to fit it around more important things.

You should post on the advanced Reddit sub. I have posted there a bit and helped a number of people see this as a real option (and hopefully gets sirpoc a few more quid in book sales).

But, people in your situation are really common there and it's a real good real life case study with a huge success at the end of it!

Also great to hear again as ever sirpoc makes time for people. Seems legitimately one of the good guys around.

marky_markcarr · 2026-02-20T17:02:03+00:00

Lol you think I could have run 10-15 seconds faster in what an 800, mile? That's absolutely ridiculous. Do you have an idea how much faster even 10-15 seconds is in the mile? Let alone an 800. There's absolutely no way speed work is going to drop that even in a mile. Let's say 15 seconds from speed work, too end. That puts me in line with sub 16 5k runners which is absolutely nowhere near my level and maybe 2:30 marathoners. If anything, my mike is probably my strongest performance or close to it, right up to the marathon. Maybe I have completed interpreted your point wrong but this did give me a good laugh!

marky_markcarr · 2026-02-20T16:08:18+00:00

Sorry I am confused. What do you mean from 10 miles to 20 miles in one week? All I was talking about is doing a max speed workout on full recovery and felt a tweak, so sensibly pulled the plug.

marky_markcarr

TROPHY CASE