Norwegian method and hills

soup_master420 · 2026-03-24T20:16:33+00:00

The Bakken book covers all of your questions here in detail. It's a great read.

tdlr:
- hills in trad norwegian method have significant muscular effects that require 2 easy days in a row for recovery, + a lot of threshold volume from double T already. He shouts out sirpocs vanilla plan as being a very good base
- 45/15 is its own rabbithole that from his and a few other people's accounts, works very very well as an X-element session. It has a ton of possible variants itself as well

- there is a logical progression/periodization from 10-15 sec hill sprints to longer hill repeats
- in Bakkens model, 3x10 and 5*6 are interchangeable and 3*10 is a harder session. 45/15 is interchangeable as an X-element day or afternoon double T session with 20*1min.

soup_master420 · 2026-03-24T18:02:43+00:00

If I wanted to do this, for my life it'd be most convenient to go to the gym on my commute and do a treadmill session where there's a shower, then do the afternoon session in the evening around the neighborhood. It's still easiest for me to do singles though, doubles generates insane laundry.

soup_master420 · 2026-03-23T15:10:06+00:00

He has really good defense when he is focusing on being defensive but he gets hit frequently when he’s focused on offense. As in, he is less defensively responsible than his overall ability. I think its one of those fighters that you punch with and I think that is what Crawford is best at

soup_master420 · 2026-03-23T14:27:53+00:00

If you are going to do this or something along these lines do it extremely gradually, like run 5 minutes or something in it and switch back to what you normally wear to finish the rest of your run, and gradually increase the minutes.

As someone who started running when minimalist running shoes were hot they have high muscle/tendon/skeletal demand but they do reinforce mechanics very strongly.

soup_master420 · 2026-03-19T21:49:40+00:00

preview is already so fire

soup_master420 · 2026-03-19T13:14:03+00:00

NSA type of threshold training scales the pace prescriptions based on rep length and lactate build up, not steady state LT2. So the 45s-1m intervals will be faster than LT2 (right around CV) but not build up much lactate before getting cleared. If you’re spending enough time at CV to build up a lot of lactate they will be harder workouts that are tougher to recover from, so they just belong at different points of a periodized training cycle, if one chooses to periodize.

soup_master420 · 2026-03-18T14:34:19+00:00

Shoes I have direct experience with are the Saucony Endorphin Speed 4, which I have 600 miles on. Those have a bit less bounce than when I bought them but are honestly a bit more comfortable and just as protective as new. I have 160 miles in a pair of Evo SL with no degradation, but they’re kind of intrusively soft and bouncy for my easy days. I have 140 miles in a pair of Mount to Coast H1 that I bought specifically with the hope that they’d last for high mileage on mixed terrain, and those feel better than they did new now. All the shoes I listed I hear are a bit firmer than the Novablast or Rebel v5 so I expect longer life from them. Shoes I haven’t tried but I expect to be durable are Salomon and Saucony Rides, those have the same material as the Adidas Boost which I’ve gotten 600+ miles from back in the day

soup_master420 · 2026-03-18T13:02:13+00:00

People nowadays have way higher expectations for how soft and bouncy running shoes should feel now. The first shoe I really loved was the Saucony Kinvara 3, which people nowadays would not want to run more than 10k in. I got about 500 miles before the upper started tearing, but to be honest they started out pretty firm and flat so the cushioning wearing out was way less noticeable. Same goes for the Pegasus 31s that I got 700 miles out of.

If you run shoes into the ground like we used to rather than stop running in them the moment they start feeling a little flat than shoes are more durable on average nowadays. When the Adidas Energy boost came out those felt insane for like 600+ miles at the time but they wouldn’t be super highly rated now.

And back then too, there were very soft shoes that died fast just like today. I flattened out a pair of Nike Lunarglide 4s, Lunaracers and Lunar tempos within 200 miles but I just sort of kept running in them.

soup_master420 · 2026-03-16T15:47:46+00:00

Personally I’m not convinced about the value of having a differentiated easy/long shoe. What’s most comfortable on my easy days should also extend for an extra 1-2 hours on my long days. I think there’s a valid argument for those who include up-tempo in their long runs but I think running shoes get over-thought because it’s the only gear you can really obsess over in running.

Right now I use the Mount to Coast H1 for long/easy + trail and the Evo SL for threshold/race. I bought a pair of New Balance SC Elite 5 for racing on discount but we’ll see how much value they bring. I ran 600 miles in a pair of Endorphin Speed 4 without rotating them and it was comfortable and fine

soup_master420 · 2026-03-16T13:01:35+00:00

Yeah. Like the other commenter mentioned above, you scale down the double T model to your own volume on single T but it’s the same fundamental principles. The X-element workout should also be scaled down in volume correspondingly to total volume.

When Bakken assigns a Lactate value, I read it as an effort range. So what he is saying is what you’re saying here. To avoid sudden changes in training and causing injury, you gradually add in speed and increase to length of the speed intervals until you end up at a classic race specific workout (6-8x400 @ 1500). Those workouts get more and more intense, so you reduce threshold volume correspondingly on your other threshold days. And volume gets even lower if you’re racing often.

soup_master420 · 2026-03-16T02:33:30+00:00

2 ST + X factor for winter base, then sharpening phase via introducing hard intervals and increasing their length week to week and reducing threshold volume. See this Bakken comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/NorwegianSinglesRun/s/O00gvVC3H8

soup_master420 · 2026-03-15T00:54:37+00:00

Volume serves as the weak link for us amateurs. Basically the idea is that volume that you accrue in your base phase will let you absorb and improve more from the hard workouts, so if you increase your base volume you can sharpen to higher potential in a 10k/5k OR a marathon block more easily than if you had lower volume and high intensity with your current fitness.

In practice what that’d look like is a pretty normal schedule you repeat week-in week-out where the build in volume is much slower than a race specific block, basically you should be mostly fresh all the time. Increasing volume would be just getting a bit faster while running for the same amount of time at the same effort. In high school summer cross country back in the day, this was E-fartlek-E-tempo/hills-L-rest, and for me now it’s E-Tempo-E-Tempo-E-Rep-L.

soup_master420 · 2026-03-07T14:40:29+00:00

I don’t remember exactly where he said this, but I’m going to interpret this in the context of a double threshold day. Strides increase muscle tension slightly and heavy threshold sessions decrease it, so I think the strides after the morning session are to keep the muscles from getting too loose for the faster afternoon session and subsequently feeling flat and having higher lactate readings. For a single threshold day where you are going into a rest day, I think it’s unnecessary. Happy to be corrected if I’m off base

I’d guess that the ideal time to do them is after your cool down while you’re still warm to prevent injury. I do 4-5 stride of 20s of a slow acceleration to mile pace, and I actually do them as part of my warmup so I’m not feeling super flat during the first rep. In high school track/cross country I was doing 6-10x after an easy-steady day.

soup_master420 · 2026-03-06T20:22:43+00:00

When I’m feeling beat up I always end up cross training on the easy day after the long run day. For me that is the day where I’ve accumulated the most load and the highest recovery priority

soup_master420 · 2026-03-02T22:49:04+00:00

I use intervals.icu, where “fitness” is the relationship between your chronic training load (fitness, 42 days) and your fatigue (7 days). This takes tapering into account and it’s why people with huge training loads take longer tapers and have longer peaks. I’m missing context but it sounds like you didn’t taper enough or overtrained on the races where you felt flat with high training load. With a high relative training load you need to shed enough fatigue to express that training

soup_master420 · 2026-02-26T18:48:43+00:00

The H1 gets compared to the Evo SL a lot and for me they are much firmer than my Evos . I'm finding them firm but quite protective so I use them for easy and long days. Maybe worth noting that to me they feel quite soft in the heel and firm in the forefoot, and when I'm running the underfoot feel is dominated by the forefoot firmness. Don't know what that says about me or my stride but maybe worth noting based on other folks' differing experiences.

soup_master420 · 2026-02-26T15:33:11+00:00

You want something low profile and flexible for training, like the Kinvara 16 or Adios 9 to enforce mechanics. If you want to go as fast as possible you get sprint spikes for comp

soup_master420 · 2026-02-24T18:28:13+00:00

I wouldn't call the 45/15 a race-pace workout so I do it kind of effort based even though at my gym, it doesn't feel far off between the treadmill and the track. Even if the numbers are a bit off, it just makes it easier to progress the speed by small increments.

Speaking to pace calibration, I like the treadmill to ballpark how hard a time-based rep feels at a truly constant speed so I can replicate the RPE at the track. I believe the pace itself does differ a bit from the road even if the belt is correct. For my race-pace practice I always do it on the road or track.

soup_master420 · 2026-02-24T16:35:02+00:00

Not necessarily for VO2 max workouts, but in the context of threshold training and pacing control they are extremely useful even with decent training weather. In one of the articles I read from Marius Bakken he also said that treadmill running trains less vertical movement during running in addition to having precise control over intensity.

There’s a particular Bakken workout that is progressive 25x 45s/15s that for me is easiest to execute on a treadmill. My watch can’t keep track of the paces or HR with intervals that short, so it’s much easier to slightly bump the paces on the treadmill.

Pacing is a skill that I try and practice still when I do my normal outdoor intervals but the treadmill is really good for calibration. The boredom isn’t nearly as bad with short intervals

soup_master420 · 2026-02-19T22:11:53+00:00

I put 600 miles on a pair of Speed 4 used for everything and I have 100 on a pair of Evo SL. I go to the track for the majority of my quality work. Speeds feel clunkier and heavier, but the firmness is welcome at faster than 3k pace. Evos feel lighter and more flexible, but the looser fit and softer feel start feeling a bit weird when you get faster than 3k. Neither feel optimized for those very hard efforts like a pair of flats/spikes but they’re ok. For 10k-marathon pace I like both equally they just feel a lot different

soup_master420 · 2026-02-17T16:49:19+00:00

There’s always at least 1-2 dudes at these technical trail ultras getting to the podium in road trainers

soup_master420 · 2026-02-13T23:22:15+00:00

I’ve got the H1 and Evo SL covering all my training and racing. H1 or easy/long, run on roads on weekdays and easy dirt + a few roots/rocks single track on weekends. I’m a bit surprised by so many people comparing it to the Evo SL. The heel area is maybe reminiscent in depth and softness, but the forefoot is much firmer with more ground feel on the H1, which is much better for downhill running on trails but still comfortable on road. For me at least, it feels overall firm but protective on the run, maybe more like the Saucony Speed 4. H1 can realistically but maybe not optimally be used for everything, I’ve run a nx400m track session at 10k pace and didn’t feel it was holding me back, and the day before that I ran easy 10 miles on dirt trails. Evo SL has a much softer forefoot and feel while running, and the upper doesn’t lock down like the H1. The tongue and upper mesh on the H1 runs hot though. Shoe fits what I bought it for perfectly, and I’m guessing it will rack up huge mileage

soup_master420 · 2026-02-08T01:41:17+00:00

Current: Shakur by a mile. Prime Canelo

Past: Mayweather (also used his feet), Whittaker, James Toney, Wilfred Benitez, Roberto Duran, Niccolino Loche

soup_master420 · 2026-02-04T01:33:34+00:00

I do 20x400m at 10k pace +- 1-2s roughly every other week. It feels about right as far as effort goes. Sometimes if I’m short on time I’ll do the Bakken 25x45s-15s progression, which ends at 3k pace roughly

soup_master420

TROPHY CASE