What is the Norwegian singles method?

Norwegian singles is a training method for recreational runners built on three sub-threshold sessions a week, one a day, with every other run easy. It adapts the Norwegian lactate-guided threshold model, whose elite runners double their threshold sessions, for runners on five to nine hours a week with no lactate meter.

The reps stay just under the threshold rather than at it. In the method's own reasoning, that's what lets you recover from three sessions a week.

Where did Norwegian singles come from?

From a LetsRun thread, "Modifying the Norwegian approach to lower mileage", whose earliest archived posts date from July 2023. The thread runs to more than 320 pages.

The parent is the Norwegian method, Marius Bakken's lactate-guided threshold model. From 1999, by his own account, he ran threshold sessions morning and evening, usually twice a week, held under the standard 4.0 mmol/L lactate line.

James Copeland, posting as sirpoc, found the model could be copied one session a day from Kristoffer Ingebrigtsen's training, which sits on Strava. A hired lactate meter showed his own paces matched it. He had raced time trials as a cyclist, and called the result a running version of cycling's sweet-spot training. The aim, in his words, was "something manageable and sustainable any hobby jogger could do".

He compiled the method in the thread as it grew, and in November 2025 published it as Norwegian Singles Method: Subthreshold Running Kept Simple, with Asha Zimmerman and Nathaniel Burness and a foreword by Bakken. Bakken describes the singles version as the same type of training, simplified to make it easier to use.

What are the rules of Norwegian singles?

Three sub-threshold sessions a week plus a long run, with every other run easy. Start from two sessions if structured intensity is new to you, and build towards three. The method counts the quality by time: sub-threshold work is 20 to 25% of your weekly running time, maybe 30%.

Each session is reps of 3 to 12 minutes just under the line with a minute's rest, every rep ending under your threshold heart rate.

Add nothing else: no strides, no hills, no faster work. The community guide lists strides, hills, and strength work as optional additions, outside the framework.

Hold a manageable level for at least a month, then make a small increase and hold that for another 2 to 3 weeks. Add time gradually, one extra 3-minute rep across the whole week paired with about 12 extra easy minutes. As volume rises, the quality share settles nearer 20 to 22%. Reassess with a race or time trial every 4 to 8 weeks. In practice a session of 10 x 1 km slowly becomes 12 and the easy days get a little longer. Expect progress season over season, not week over week.

Set your rep length and 60 seconds of rest in Timed Intervals, and turn Intervals + HR Zones on. RunBeat calls each rep and tells you your zone while you're in it, and Zone 5 is your cue to ease off:

Timed Intervals in RunBeat RunBeat calls every work and rest phase, and your Apple Music playlists switch with it.

How easy are the easy days in Norwegian singles?

Zone 2. Every run that isn't a sub-threshold session stays in Zone 2.

That's a ceiling, not a target. Runners on the method often sit below it, and the method's guidance has moved from a pace rule to the heart rate rule because pace lets you push too hard.

Holding it means slowing down for most runners. Keep your easy runs extremely easy.

Why is there no VO2 max work in Norwegian singles?

Because the method says you don't need it until you stop progressing on sub-threshold work alone. The only harder effort in its week is a race or a test run, roughly every four to six weeks. One of its runners raced a 5K parkrun about every four to five weeks, and still set personal bests after 10 weeks without racing.

Bakken's own model keeps one session a week at a different, slightly higher stimulus, which he calls the X element. In his description of the singles week, there's no weekly or every-other-week session like it.

Three true threshold runs a week is beyond a hobby jogger, and even one of them plus a VO2 max session is asking a lot. The reps stay under the line so that three of them fit. A runner who only races 5K would probably gain from some 5K-pace work, and it's probably not what limits most recreational runners. The community guide adds that a plateau alone doesn't mean you need faster intervals. It calls a separate VO2 max phase optional rather than the expected next step.

Threshold-intensity training hasn't been shown to raise VO2 max, and the evidence that it moves an already conditioned runner's threshold is thin.

Do you need a lactate meter for Norwegian singles?

No. Pace and heart rate get you there, and the method calls testing optional.

Lactate was the original control. In the Norwegian model, sub-threshold is a state, not a pace, and the meter is how the state was measured. The target is about 2.5 to 3.5 mmol/L at the end of the last rep, for a trained runner whose threshold reads 4.0 to 4.5. Bakken ran his own sessions from 2.3 to 3.0 mmol/L, under the standard 4.0 line.

After a month or so, the runner who compiled it says, you can get to "98% of where you need to be" without a meter. He stopped testing himself once his sessions all landed around 2.5 to 3.5. The community guide adds that a fixed reading of 2, 3, or 4 mmol/L doesn't guarantee the right intensity.

In practice runners set their reps by pace from a recent race. The other way is heart rate, held under the threshold heart rate a 30-minute field test estimates.

How is Norwegian singles different from double threshold?

One sub-threshold session a day instead of two, with far less running around it.

Double threshold is the elite form, described in a 2023 review of Norway's world-class 1500 m to 10,000 m runners, with Bakken among its authors. It's three to four lactate-guided threshold sessions and one VO2 max session a week, inside 150 to 180 km of mostly easy running. Lactate is measured every one to three reps, and the Ingebrigtsens often ran two of the threshold sessions in one day.

Singles keeps the sessions and drops the second one, because a recreational week has neither the mileage nor the hours. The method's runners put the line for doubling at about 70 miles a week, or about eight hours of running. The second run comes in as an easy double first. The runner who compiled it ran 50 to 55 miles a week and stayed in singles. Doubles help, and he didn't have the time.

In his foreword to the method's book, Bakken calls his own model very intense and demanding, never intended for parents who juggle work and family.

Who is Norwegian singles for?

Runners training five to nine hours a week for 5K to the half marathon, who can give it six months or more.

Those are the method's own figures. For the aerobically underdeveloped runner on five hours a week and up, it's probably as good as training gets. At about eight and a half to nine hours and beyond, there are better ways to train. It's not beginner training. The range is low intermediate to sub-elite, and one of its runners put it as "If you are in this thread, you are a hobby jogger."

To get fit in eight weeks, it's probably the worst way to train, by its runners' own account. For a runner thinking six months or more, they call it the best option.

The community guide's standard framework is for ongoing training from 5K to the half marathon. On its own it's unlikely to cover what an 800 m runner needs. For the marathon, the guide suggests the adaptation only after sustained training around or above seven hours a week.

Does Norwegian singles work?

The runners doing it report that it does: recreational runners, masters athletes among them, report substantial improvements. The model it comes from has the results of Norway's elite distance runners to show for it.