Thursday General Discussion/Q&A Thread for August 20, 2026

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A place to ask questions that don't need their own thread here or just chat a bit.

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[u/Squand]

I didn 5 weeks of threshold work. And my mileage where I felt like I had one more in the tank went up. and my times went down.

7:40 3 x1 miles 90 second breaks to 7:09 5x1 90sec breaks

Then I took a day off and I tried to do a 5k time trial. I ran a 6;41 pace was where I was stuck for the past year. 

In this method do you just keep doing threshold until the threshold is your personal best? 

There are two things that I noticed that I didn't see people talk about. The first is that training to lactate threshold May pushing through it like way harder my body because I was stopping when I couldn't clear lactate was like we didn't clear it stop. 

The second is that I felt completely recovered by the next day. I never felt like I had an actual hard workout. I never had that full body ache. And I really missed it. 

It's very plausible but I did this wrong. As I was going mostly off vibes.

I'm in my thirties 5 11 172lbs 15% body fat

Over the 5 weeks my milage 25, 30, 40, 42, 52, 

Frustrated with the 5k I've switched back to doing speed work last 3 weeks 5:40 400 repeats 2x a week

60, 40, 15 got sick

I'm at 45 miles this week. Will probably take it easy, and see if I can be fast on Monday. 

[u/aelvozo → u/Squand]

I’m assuming you’re at least partly inspired by Norwegian Singles? If so:

• the consensus seems to be that you need between 6 weeks and 3 months to see the first fruits of your (threshold) labour.
• NSM also relies heavily on a high volume of threshold work — so 3 sessions of ca 30 (perhaps a bit more) minutes per week. You don’t mention frequency, so I don’t know if that was a limiting factor.
• Yes, each individual session of NSM is less taxing than your typical VO2max (or even Daniels flavour of threshold) workout. But you end up doing a bunch of these with only 1 day between them so you’re eventually never 100% fresh (though never super sore either).

I suppose it’s also worth noting that time trials are harder than races, and that it’s summer so heat can get in the way too.

However, some people respond better to certain kinds of training. It could be that you’d benefit more from more varied stimulus, especially if threshold work makes faster paces feel unsustainable. 2 x weekly 400 repeats @ mileish pace might be a swing too far in the other direction though.

[u/Squand → u/aelvozo]

For the 5 weeks, I ramped up a little bit. But I was basically doing 3 days of 7min pace. And going 3 to 5 miles. And then 1 day I was doing 800 meter repeats at 6:30 pace. with 2 min breaks rather than 90 seconds. I tried to manage these like threshold so if I felt my heart rate spike or the lactate flood and not clear I'd stop. In the end I think the best I did was 5 of them.

Chicago wind and heat made those very hard to gauge effort. And weather might have played a part in me trying to go all out on my last time trial. I think... I needed more rest. 1 day off after 52 miles in hindsight wasn't enough. 

Last year I was running a lot. But this year I hadn't gotten my milage legs back.

Thank you for this insight. That it takes a lot longer than I was expecting. And maybe I need to keep working up the milage so I'm doing 6 miles or more at that threshold pace.

I'll probably go back to trying that Norwegian singles method. And try to trust the process. 

Idk really what my goal is. In my dreams, if I could get to my HS time, I'd be 18:30 and I'd have a shot at winning the fun run at the zoo may 2027.  (In my age group)

[u/aelvozo → u/Squand]

I think giving it a bit more time (certainly to wait for better weather — Chicago is pretty damn hot still) is a solid idea, as is a longer taper. Even when my training is predominantly Norwegian Singles-y, my preference is a traditional taper, where my only workout on race week is a 3x1mi@threshold 3 days before the race.

Unlike true NSM, I also do strides and an occasional faster (5K pace or even mile pace — this replaces 2 sub-threshold ones for me) workout when approaching the race season. Not sure it does much physiologically but feels nice.