Medium Intensity High Volume Intervals

Emil Zátopek racing.

While most interval training is done at high intensity, it is possible to run them at a lower intensity, which allows for correspondingly higher volumes. This technique has been popularized as The Norwegian Method.

Contents

1 Emil Zatopek

This approach was used by Emil Zatopek was a runner who set world records and won Olympic Gold medals. Emil is reported to have run up to 100x (400m + 200m recovery), with the 400m a few seconds slower than his 10K pace. That works out as a 37-mile workout, with 25 miles at close to 10K pace. While this level of workout is beyond most recreational runners, doing a larger volume of medium intensity intervals should be considered by experienced athletes.

2 The Norwegian Method

There's no definition of "The Norwegian Method", as it's more a general trend amongst some elite Norwegian athletes. While many focus on The Norwegian Method's use of Lactate measurement during training, I think is a distraction. I'd argue the key to The Norwegian Method is the use of Medium Intensity High Volume Intervals (MIHVI). Athletes that are considered to follow The Norwegian Method will often run two MIHVI on the same day, and do that twice a week, and cover around 25% of their training distance as part of MIHVI (which is a lot less than 25% of the training time due to the faster paces.) The athletes will often run 10Km of intervals, such as 25x 400m, or 10x 1000m. Their paces are often defined in terms of heart rate or lactate level, but without knowing their max heart rate or any type of lactate threshold, it's hard to evaluate those metrics. Comparing their training paces with their race performance, it appears they run these intervals at around their marathon pace, thought this can vary from slower than marathon pace to half marathon pace, or even 5K pace for short intervals.

3 What Pace?

For most runners, using marathon pace, or the Jack Daniels Running Formula Tempo pace is a good starting point. You can calculate these with the VDOT Calculator.

4 How many?

Emil was an Olympic champion, and most of us have neither the time nor the ability to handle this level of training. As with any speed work, I believe it is important to ramp up the quantity and intensity over time to prevent injury. I would suggest starting with at your tempo pace VDOT Calculator or slower and do 12 repeats. You can then build up the number of intervals over the weeks. This could become the bulk of a midweek training session, or if you are dedicated enough, part of your long run.

5 Possible Benefits

There are three possible benefits from this workout.

1. Running at a faster pace has different biomechanics, such as greater activation of the calf muscle and hamstrings. This type of workout allows for much greater time at the faster pace, increasing the training stress of the higher speed muscle activation.
2. Because Glycogen depletion increases disproportionately with intensity, this workout will deplete glycogen more rapidly than steady state running.
3. Running at a faster pace typically involves greater muscle extension, which will change the eccentric loading, possibly improving DOMS resistance.

6 Details on The Norwegian Method

The best resources I could find are the 2019 paper by Leif I Tjelta, based on the author's relationship with the athletes, a 2023 paper on Lactate-Guided Threshold Interval Training, and a trainer's talk. (There is an earlier TEDx talk about the Norwegian Method, which defines it as the 4x4 intervals, which is 4 repeats of 4 minutes at 90-95% max heart rate with 3 minute recoveries.)

• All the athletes referenced are elite level, so their training paces are likely to be much faster than recreational athletes. Their training distance is fairly typical for elite level runners, covering around 100 miles/160Km per week. (One reference suggested lower average volumes.)
• The most distinctive aspect of the athletes is the use of a lactate meter during training in addition to heart rate and training pace. The training seems to use fixed lactate levels as training goals, with no reference to the athlete's lactate threshold. It may be that the trainers are assuming the old approach that 4 mmol/l of lactate is a good enough estimate of their threshold.
• The lactate levels are typically below 4.0 mmol/l, with some using 2.5 or 3.5 depending on the session.
• The bulk of the distance is performed at Long Slow Distance pace, or as Google translated it, "Calm long ride", which I rather like.
• They train every day, with the typical weekly pattern M:2xLSD, T:2xMIHVI, W:2xLSD, T:2xMIHVI, F:2xLSD, Sa:Hills/LSD, Su:1xLSD. Some runners will do "threshold runs", but these seem to be quite a bit slower than what would be considered threshold or tempo pace, typically marathon pace or slower, and their lactate levels are <2.0 mmol/l.

None of the training details I could find showed the athletes performing any Tempo or Threshold runs, only Long Slow Distance (LSD) or interval training. They perform a high proportion of their training volume as interval training, around 25%.

6.1 Translation of Training week of Bjørnar Kristensen 2006

His 10Km PR is 29:15, which I used to estimate training paces. This week totals 178Km. The red text is mine, everything else is translated as well as I could from Marius Bakken.

Day	Session 1	Session 2
Monday	Long Slow Distance (Literally, Calm long ride) 15.5Km in 69:43 [4:30 min/km] HR 136 Yep fine, felt fine, a bit daff [?]	Long Slow Distance (LSD) 12Km in 55:39 HR 131-142 Felt fine
Tuesday	Threshold 40 x 1 min Warmup 16:10 Jogging 16:08 HR 151-173 whole session Lactate at intervals Interval 10=2.2 Interval 30=2.3 Interval 40=3.9 Pace 3:10-2:53 min/km [Wide variation in pace, Marathon to nearly 5K]	Threshold 6.4Km in 21:00 Warmup 10:09 Jogging 9:55 HR 161-168 Pace 3:18-3:14 [M to 50K pace, Slower than T pace] Lactate 1.9 Strength training 3x 10 exercises
Wednesday	LSD 16Km in 73:14 HR 130-150 Felt very nice, feeling very energetic for ten. Even on a long trip.	LSD 10K in 44:17 HR 132 Yes, very nice, I felt very energetic.
Thursday	Tempo 6.4Km in 21:01 HR 161-168 Warmup 11:00 Jogging 11:05 Lactate 3.0 Pace 3:13-3:20 [Around M pace] Wow, the fastest I've run 6km was in the morning.	Tempo 12x 1000m, 1 min rest Warmup 13:51 Jogging: 13:57 Times 3.12.7(151) 3.07.7(160) 3.06.5(162) 3.06.6(161) Lactate 2.9 3.03.2(163) 3.04.6(164) 3.04.6(163) 3.05.4(164) 3.04.3(165) 3.04.0(165) Lactate meter fails 3.01.4 (166) Lactate 4.1 (average) [Matches JD T pace, Half Marathon Pace]
Friday	LSD 15Km in 67:34 HR 131-145 Well done, I felt fine, I took it easy and ran with Kjetil and Laitinen	LSD 10Km in 48:10 No HR data (no strap?) Strength training Is one of the heaviest, if not the heaviest up here. The strength jack and a little heavy but nice.
Saturday	Hill Running 10x 200m, 10x 100m [No details of recovery] Warmup 22:42 Jogging 22:34 Average 200m in 42.8 (42.1) Lactate 8.6 Average 100m 20.5 (19.96) Lactate 10.6 Max HR 174 [similar to Tue max HR, and seems very low for this session unless his max is low.]	LSD 10Km in 48:10 HR 124-151 Well done, I felt fine, I took it easy and ran with Kjetil and Laitinen
Sunday	LSD 21Km [no details] Felt fine	Only one session

6.2 Estimated race paces

I used the VDOT calculator to estimate the race paces for the above analysis.

Mile	5K	5 Mile	10K	10 Mile	Half Marathon	Marathon	50K
4:32 (2:49/Km)	14:15 (2:51/Km)	23:23 (2:54/Km)	29:12 (2:55/Km)	48:21 (3:00/Km)	1:04:22 (3:03/Km)	2:14:53 (3:11/Km)	2:43:10 (3:15/Km)

7 See also

• Introduction to Workout Types
• Introduction to Interval Training
• Practical Interval Training