As always, thank you so much for the continued support and feedback since the last release. This one has a lot of correctness work alongside some big new features, and the headline is that planned Apple Watch workouts, completed-run analysis, and race planning are much better .

Download for iOS.

Download on the Play Store.

If you'd like to support even more, there are three things that would be most valuable:

• Leave a 5-star review on the app/play store (and if it's not a 5-star app yet, please let me know how I can make it one)

• Make a monthly donation! You can now make a monthly recurring donation to support the continued improvement of the app. Currently, my tooling costs are somewhere in the range of $250/month (not to mention 20+ hours/wk). My goal is to cover these costs as well as get a cheap Garmin device so that I'm not relying so much on my users as live app guinea pigs!

• Join our discord! You can access it via the link on the Profile tab of the app since Reddit won't let me post a discord link in my post body. If you leave a feature request or bug report in the Discord, I typically will implement/fix it that day or the next day.

Anyway, the release notes!

Apple Watch Planned Workouts

iOS users can now keep the next 7 days of Norwegian Singles workouts scheduled directly in Apple's Workout app. Turn it on from Integrations, sync your schedule, and the app will keep upcoming workouts refreshed as your plan changes. The existing one-off Send to Watch button is still there for individual workouts.

You can also choose whether scheduled Watch workouts include alerts, and one-off Watch sends can now be sent as Outdoor Run or Indoor Run. That should make treadmill days feel a lot less awkward.

Completed Run Details

Tapping a completed workout from the Plan tab now opens a real completed-run view. You can see pace and heart-rate charts, heart-rate zone time, splits, laps, intervals, elevation, weather when available, and prescribed vs actual workout tables.

Quality workouts are much easier to read after the fact. The app now separates what was prescribed from what your watch or intervals.icu detected, instead of implying that every watch lap perfectly matched every planned interval.

Multi-activity days also behave better. If you split a day across multiple runs, totals are now more consistent across the card, preview, and debug output.

Norwegian Singles Method Pace Accuracy

Sub-threshold paces now come from the Norwegian Singles Method book table when your 5K time is known. Slower 5K times beyond the printed table now extrapolate more sensibly instead of getting clamped to the final row.

The Training Paces screen also has more useful rows now: 5K, 10K, 3-minute, 6-minute, 10-minute, 30K, and marathon pace. Pace steppers move by 1 second per tap so small adjustments are easier.

Across the plan and workout screens, the app now avoids confusing labels like 15K, 30K, and HM pace for sub-threshold work. The underlying paces are unchanged where they should be, but the visible labels are cleaner.

Race Plans

Race plans now start from a real race date by default. You can pick the race date from a built-in calendar, set a start week, and the plan places race day on the actual calendar day instead of working backward from a vague number of weeks.

The setup flow now asks you to explicitly choose peak weekly volume and max long-run duration. The app gives clearer guidance and warnings around those choices, rather than silently guessing and sometimes creating odd long-run/easy-run balance.

Race-plan long runs and taper weeks got a lot of cleanup too. Long-run caps are respected more consistently, max long runs behave more like peak exposures instead of repeated plateaus, and taper weeks should avoid surprise oversized long runs.

Marathon Plans

Marathon plans now include race-specific marathon-pace workouts in the final block. Those sessions now show the correct planned time and distance on plan cards, weekly totals, share cards, and sync metadata.

Marathon taper behavior is also more sane, especially for lower-volume runners or plans with fewer run days. Four-day marathon plans now default to a more appropriate long-run share at peak volume, and Quality Long Run behavior was reworked so it moves a real quality session into the long run instead of inventing a separate hard block.

Ongoing Training

Ongoing training can now have a volume cap, so the plan does not build forever. You can set a ceiling during setup, and future weeks will respect it.

The progression engine now keeps your selected quality ratio stable instead of creeping upward over time. It also balances new reps across workouts more cleanly as volume grows.

Short, Balanced, and Long session preference now works better in race plans, weekly plans, and ongoing plans. If you only have one or two quality sessions per week, the app now explains exactly what you will get and rotates the missing workout types week to week.

Ongoing race weeks no longer become the baseline for the next normal week, and Monday rollover is more deterministic. In plain English: the app should be much less likely to get stuck looking at stale weeks.

Weekly Training Brief

Ongoing plans now produce a Weekly Training Brief after the week ends. It summarizes what you actually completed: total time, distance, matched runs, long run, and day-by-day completion.

It appears once as a bottom sheet, and the brief remains available inside the plan view after that.

Indoor and Treadmill Training

Indoor and treadmill runs from Strava and intervals.icu can now match back to your plan. The app is less dependent on GPS distance for treadmill runs, so indoor workouts should no longer be ignored just because they do not look like normal outdoor runs.

Apple Watch sends now support Indoor Run as well as Outdoor Run.

Quick Create and Library Saves

Quick Create workouts can finally be saved intentionally. When saving, you can choose whether to update the Quick Create default or save the current workout as a new Library workout.

Rest intervals, open warmup/cooldown choices, and warmup/cooldown timing now survive saves. Library saves also give clearer feedback instead of simply turning the button gray again.

Plan Screen Quality of Life

Plan cards now show the actual calendar date beside the weekday, which makes it much easier to tell similar weeks apart. Ongoing week summaries now include weekly distance too.

Rest days can now be opened and changed from the plan. You can convert them to easy runs, long runs, quality sessions, or races without generating a fake rest workout.

Day-type edits also clear stale workout fields more reliably, so changing a day from quality to easy or race to rest should not leave old workout details behind.

Integrations and Debug Reports

Profile now has a dedicated Integrations screen. Strava, intervals.icu, and Apple Watch scheduling live there with clearer connection status and sync controls, while normal profile settings stay less cluttered.

You can also submit debug reports from inside the app. Reports include useful diagnostic context, which makes it much easier for me to reproduce and fix weird plan, sync, or matching issues.

Matching, Sync, and Notifications

Activity matching now stays inside the visible plan week, so last week's run should not match this week's workout. Private Strava activities can also request expanded access only when needed, rather than asking everyone up front.

Manual intervals.icu sync no longer rewrites unchanged plans, which should reduce duplicate workouts for Garmin and COROS users. Strava sync also runs less aggressively in the background.

Daily training notifications now look up the workout for the actual alarm date, which should prevent Sunday/Monday rollover weirdness.

Heart Rate Training Polish

Easy heart-rate targets now use a useful floor and ceiling for training-load calculations. HR Easy mode also preserves warmup targets correctly inside the app and when sending to Apple Watch.

Heart-rate sync behavior was adjusted to avoid confusing mixed HR/pace targets for Garmin and COROS workouts.

Other Bug Fixes

Reset All Data now clears completed-run matches and caches more completely.

Flat runs can still show elevation charts instead of hiding the section just because total gain is small.

Leaving race-plan setup without saving no longer resets ongoing training.

Current supporters no longer see the supporter announcement, and the old What's New popup is quiet until there is actually something new to announce.

Not to discount his achievement, but I honestly thought that he'd run a lot faster.

Quick backstory: I have been getting back into running consistently since last Summer / Fall and noticed once again that it doesn’t take much for niggles / small injuries to appear for me.

On the search for a solution to this I decided to try out the Norwegian / Norwegian Singles style of training and I have seen some first results already (new 5k Pb, 22:04 from 22:39 two years ago without any of the race pace work and even on lower mileage than I used to do back then).
I have stuck to the paces from Bakkens golden Zone calculator for subT sessions and they have felt pretty spot on.

Here comes my question regarding the approach to easy runs: Whenever I try to go purely by Heart rate on my easy runs, not looking at pace at all, I run a lot slower than when sticking to a conservative pace and not looking at hr the whole time.
In the two screenshots I ran by pace in the first and by HR in the second one (similar loop, similar conditions, similar RPE, within three weeks of one another). This is not a one of thing, it happens very consistently, I have even tried switching mid run and have seen the same effect.

Has anyone experienced anything similar and do you think there is any harm in going by pace / feel if going conservative enough? Before adding a third quality session (currently on two subT Sessions, 2x Easy 1x Easy Long) I want to make sure I don’t overdo Easy days to avoid burning out.

I am getting quite different paces for the workouts from those two apps (apart from the temperature adjustment in LacTrace). LacTrace seems to be quite a bit more conservative...

Basically LacTrace gives me a pace for 3 min intervals that Norwegian Singles gives me for 6 min intervals (4:41- 4:49 LacTrace 3 min vs 4:38 midpoint = 4:33 - 4:43 in Norwegian Singles for 3 min, and 4:45 midpoint = 4:40 - 4:50 for 6 min in Norwegian Singles)

Any advice on which one to go with ? Rather err on the safe side (especially as temperatures are getting hot now)

Hey all, this is my personal progress report after 18 weeks of Sirpoc’s Norwegian Singles Method. I think progress reports are kinda silly and self-centered, but I also like listening to success stories of people walking (running) the same path as me, so maybe you’ll like this. I’m not looking for praise, as my ego is enormous already, but if you have any questions or comments I love talking about training even more than I like training, itself.

In December, after a lackluster Turkey Trot, a decided to overhaul my training for the millionth time and do workouts exclusively with 60 seconds rest. Shortly thereafter, I heard about Norwegian Singles and bought the book. I liked Sirpoc’s story, I liked the workouts, and I liked that it was pretty similar to what I was doing anyways, so I decided to devote my entire life to it.

After a brief buildup in early December, I’ve run roughly 50 miles a week every week with three workouts and a long run each week. Workouts are either 3x 10min, 4x 6min, or 8x 3min, all with a minute rest. I started with 15x 1min instead of 3x 10min for a few weeks when I thought I’d be training for a mile. Easy runs are 50 EASY minutes, Long Runs are 80 EASY minutes.

Here are some things I noticed straight away:

1. I felt great. All the time. A stiff zombie gait, especially in the mornings, used to be an accepted consequence of hard training. Now I feel great every day, all day. Even my friends have commented “this is the least geriatric you’ve ever been since I’ve known you.” Aside from that, I just FELT strong.

2. My hip injury disappeared. I’ve a hip injury since July 2024. I tried training through it, taking time off, scrapping running entirely for calisthenics, whatever I did I’d always have nagging hip pain, all day. When I got back into training in January 2025 I kept Sunday a sacred rest day so that my hip could reobtain some semblance of normalcy. Since starting NSM I’ve run every day, and my hip pain has gone away entirely.

3. I’m having fun? My sister and I used to have a workout pace we called “looking cool” pace, which meant you were running fast enough to open up your stride but not fast enough to visibly struggle or, in her words, “anybody driving past you thinks you look really cool.” Every NSM workout is, essentially, looking cool pace. There’s no going to the well, no deals with death, I don’t even procrastinate workouts (as much) because they’re just not that scary. It’s just looking cool, having fun.

My lackluster Turkey Trot was 29:30, or a 56.6 VDOT. I trained at the appropriate paces through December and in early January ran an indoor 5000m in 17:41 (57.5) and could not have run a second faster. I was happy with the improvement, though kinda wishing for a breakthrough.

I ran the Brooklyn Parkrun a month later in 17:48 (or 17:27 according to Strava) feeling pretty good on a weird course, then a 5k in Prospect Park in 17:32 (or 17:19 according to Strava) and probably coulda run a bit faster but had to hold down some lactic bile for the last 400m. So there was some improvement there but nothing I could really point to.

Then I ran the New Bedford Half Marathon in 1:23 or so (1:22 according to Strava due to two bathroom breaks). I followed the prescribed NSM taper in and taper out. I felt like I had worked pretty hard the past few months with nothing to show for it. I also felt terrible during the race itself. I decided to quit drinking and smoking weed, which I did most every day, and see if that made a difference.

It didn’t make a difference during workouts, but I was sleeping better, feeling less lethargic, and generally quitting drinking and smoking makes me feel more confident, kinda like how running every day makes me feel more confident. After about a month of this, in early April, I ran a pretty flat out and back 5k in 17:11 (59.4), even though the race started 20 minutes early and I didn’t get a chance to entirely warm up. Again, I could not have run faster.

The next week I ran the Cherry Blossom 10 Miler in 58:56 (59.5), following the prescribed NSM taper for a half marathon. I felt great, confident, smooth, etc. I got to the 5 mile mark in the time I ran my Turkey Trot and knew I could do it again. I got walked down by a bunch of kickers in the last mile, but again, felt like I could not have run faster.

Here’s what I’ve liked about the last few months:

1. I don’t have to be tough. Like I said, I don’t have to go to the well, I don’t have to be brave. I can just be kinda tough, and kinda brave, every day.
2. I don’t have to be ambitious. I just have to execute. The prescribed splits are what I hit, no slower, no faster. Faster, in fact, is actually worse.
3. I don’t need to be strategic. I don’t need to periodize, I don’t need to craft a season. If I want to test my fitness I jump in a 5k. If I want to run a longer race I still run the same weeks just at a lower intensity. I know exactly what I’m doing every day.
4. Lastly, and is most important, I get to enjoy the fruits of my labor. I did not experience a breakthrough the way Sirpoc did, but I have improved my 5k time by an average of 10 seconds per month, which is a rate of progress I am happy with. It’s a lot of work over a long time for seemingly little return, but it’s safe and near guaranteed, kinda like investing in an Index Fund, and I love investing in Index Funds almost as much as I love investing in Norwegian Singles Method.

My ultimate goal is to win my local Turkey Trot in 2028 and die by lightning strike at the finish line. I will be following Norwegian Singles Method for the remainder of that endeavor.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t indulge in some shameless self promotion. If you enjoyed this post, I make a comic on Instagram called @theorangerunner. Every comic I’ve posted since November has been inspired by this journey. If you’re on a similar path, you might find some inspiration, or at least some humor.

Thank you!

Edit: My Turkey Trot is 5 miles, not 5k. So a 29:33 translates to roughly a 17:50 5k, or a 56.6 VDOT.

If anyone's interested, it's the Pequot Turkey Trot in Fairfield, Connecticut. You get an elite finisher t-shirt if you come in the top 20. I've run it most years since 2010 but haven't got a t-shirt since Covid. This year my goal is to get a t-shirt. Next year it's to podium. The year after it's to win and die happy. It's relatively competitive and takes up an unhealthy amount of my mental bandwidth.

After starting Norwegian Singles, my Strava Fitness Score skyrocketed to levels I hadn’t seen in two years. I felt so cool, you know? A steadily increasing score is a great motivator in lieu of actual races.

Then after two months it began declining, and declining, and declining, and now it’s lower than when I started Norwegian Singles. According to Strava, despite a dogged diet of fifty miles and seventy eight minutes of sub threshold work a week, despite a rigid adherence to the principles and tenets of our path, I’ve been wasting my time.

To be clear, I don’t care. I am getting faster and my times are coming down and that is literally the whole point. Strava can go kick rocks, and unless I get slower I won’t change a thing.

HOWEVER.

I recall a post on the original Letsrun thread, where Sirpoc mentions that whenever his fitness score increased he would, almost without fail, PR at a Parkrun. It seemed that Fitness Scores, beyond simply great motivators, could be accurate assessments of one’s capabilities.

I want that! How cool would it be to roll up to a race and be able to say “the data says I’m going to PR and the data is never wrong.” Like a robot! I do not want uncertainty. I do not want to feel. I want to be a robot— a robot that wins the Turkey Trot.

SO:

I have come to three conclusions, which I have listed in order of likeliness:
1. Strava Fitness Scores do not matter, especially when the only data it’s getting is from a four year old heart rate monitor on my wristwatch.
2. Strava Fitness Scores do matter, and I am working myself into a hole. In short, while I am getting faster, I could be getting faster faster.
3. Strava Fitness Scores do matter, and I’m dying. Despite this, I am bravely plowing through training that shouldn’t be humanly possible and somehow, against all odds, racing faster than before.

If the first conclusion is true, then again, I do not care. My races are getting faster and that is all that matters.

If the second conclusion is true, then I would love any input, advice, assurances, or commiserations you all have to offer.

If the third conclusion is true, then I have no regrets.

(for reference, the first picture with heart rate data is from a workout at peak Fitness Score, the second is at current Fitness Score, the third is from my Best Race, and the last is what Strava thinks my maximums and zones are. I also attached a relevant comic.)

Race Information

• Name: Copenhagen Marathon 2026
• Date: April 10, 2026
• Distance: 26.2 miles
• Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
• Time: 02:51:57

Personal Info

• M38
• Full-time, in-office desk job
• 2x kids
• Train 7 days/pw with regular doubles and cross-training (indoor bike)
• Running for just under 3 years
• Strava profile if anyone is interested: https://www.strava.com/athletes/19795748

Marathon Background

I have ran the marathon distance once before where I did a solo time-trial in November 2024 with a time 02:55 for the exact distance and 02:57 for 42.5KM (total distance of 43K in 02:59).

This was my first official Marathon race where I used my solo TT as a base time and something to improve on.

Goals

Goal	Description	Completed?
A	Sub 2:45	No
B	sub 2:50	No
C	Sub 3:00	Yes
D	Finish	Yes

I wanted to go in with something to aim for, however due to my injuries (meaning there was a lack of running specific base building) they were relatively soft targets. This was reinforced by seeing people I know who have much more running/marathon experience, and are much faster across other distances than me hit the wall at London, Manchester etc.

Training

My lead-up to the training block was hindered due to injury (right IT band issue), and suspected metatarsalgia in my right foot. This ruled me out of running pretty much completely between September 2025-January 2026.

During this time I spent most of my time on my bike using Rouvy for structured training. My goal here was to replicate NSA as closely as possible with easy rides alternating with sweet spot sessions and one long easy to moderate ride p/w. I found I could stack up the sweet spot sessions and had no issues doing these on consecutive days as the lack of running load meant the fatigue was more than manageable. Bike fitness quickly improved during this time, with noticeable increases in W and drops in HR. I had zero issues with the IT band whilst on the bike and could do as much volume as time allowed.

The odd run that I managed was then within the NSA approach, however they were always blighted by the IT band where the pain was mostly 7/10 leaving me limping for a few hours after finishing the run.

My plan was to replicate SirPoc's London Marathon block, converting distance to time. This meant starting the 16 week block on Monday 19th Jan.

On the 19th, still very much injured, I made the decision to crack on, start the block as intended and see what happens (I'd know pretty quickly if I was going to be on the start line or not).

The first week as expected was a struggle however I continued to push through. By the end of week two, the pain was down to a 4/10, and by half way through week 3 it had completely gone, never to rear its head for the rest of the block.

Honestly, I've got no idea how this happened. I sacked off the physio/rehab/strength work that I'd been done for the months prior and 'just ran' (along with spending time on the bike) and somehow the IT band issue just went away. The metatarsaglia didn't unfortunately, and was something that I'm continuing to manage.

Volume for the first 4x weeks were:

Run	Ride
Week 1	93.4K (8H15M)
Week 2	98.6K (8H35M)
Week 3	107.6K (9H5M)
Week 4	116.6K (10H12M)

From there I continued to follow the SirPoc block based on time. The only edits I made were sometimes splitting the easy runs into two, i.e. 1x 60 min easy run would become 2x 45 min easy runs, as well as the additional cross-training on the bike - this would gradually decrease during the block as the longer, marathon specific runs came into the plan (such as 3/4/5x 18 mins etc.).

Overall I see the block as a success, primarily because I got through it (after week3) without any issues.

It built up the running fitness specificity and I did all the sessions exactly according to plan (i.e. 5x 18 min reps were done at 3.49/km, 3s/km faster than target pace whilst keeping my HR exactly where I wanted it to be).

My only issue was the planned HM which was meant to be a race however there were none that were happening that weekend so I ended up doing a solo TT in 80 mins, where my target was 77-78 mins.

All training was done solo and either before work (6am) and post kids bed time (after 8pm) and I averaged 112km/pw of running for the 15 weeks of the block (excluding Week 16 taper and race week) + the additional time on the bike.

Pre-race

Travelled to CPH on Thursday 7th May and went straight to the expo to pick-up the bib number (11152).

This was our first time in CPH where I went with my family. Friday and Saturday were spent exploring the city by bike. Over the two days I think I covered about 30-40KM on the bike (cargo bike with kids in the front) + around 20,000 steps per day so it was far from an easy, relaxing time. This was always the plan as it's as much a holiday for them as it was a race weekend for me especially given the sacrifice the wife has made over the prior 4 months allowing me to train as I did. Some may see this as stupidity and a waste but hey ho.

Started to carb load on the Friday and continued into Saturday, I tried to get in as much as possible aiming for 7g per KG. Done via a mix of carb heavy food and Maurten 320's.

This was my first carb load and it was a struggle, I felt like I was force feeding but did it anyway. Lack of experience here and I may alter this for the next one as it made me feel super heavy.

By Saturday night I wasn't feeling good and spent a fair whack of time on the toilet, this continued through the night and into Sunday (race-day), Monday and now Tuesday, so I must have unfortunately picked up a bug! On race day I just put this down to the carb load and pushed through.

Sunday morning I couldn't stomach any food so had a Maurten 320, 2x Beet It Nitro 400's, 1x Nomio and 1x 16g FlyCarb. As you can imagine, this combo on a dodgy stomach was pretty brutal.

2km easy jog to the event area, some light drills and stretches, a change of shoes (into Do-Win PB Pro's), drop the bag off and jog to the start line about 6 mins ahead of show time.

Race

I set my watch to auto-lap every 5KM and also manually lapped when I hit every 5KM marker. I also set a nutrition alert every 15 mins and sipped on 100% maple syrup from a soft flask for each alert (as practiced in training). I filled 2x 150ml soft flasks which gives 275g of carbs giving me exactly 100g p/h.

My race plan was pretty simple, start at 3.55-4.00/km and wind down from there depending on how my HR was. I didn't write any splits down, just kept glancing at the avg. time to see if I was in check.

My stomach was in knots for the first 14KM and I was constantly keeping an eye out for a toilet just in case, however aside from this I felt great. Pace was perfect, legs were good, breathing was fine, HR was around 165 bpm (LT1 161 BPM, LT2 174 BPM) so all systems go. From there the stomach mostly settled for the rest of the run with only one or two flare ups - nothing that made me need to stop.

Ran passed the family for the first time at 17KM where the race conveniently went passed the end of the street were staying on and grabbed a 330ml bottle of water with some electrolytes in.

Had that and continued on feeling great. Hit the half way mark at 1H23, felt very comfortable, checked the stats and all was good, time to start nudging the pace very slightly.

Then, at 28KM, both of my hamstrings cramped and that was that. Pulled over and could feel a tight ball on each leg, asked a bystander to open a packet of salt stick chews and stretched out the legs. Got going again but they were incredibly tight and felt like they could completely go if I pushed on a planned pace so for the rest of the race it was just about cracking on as best as possible and enjoying it. Picked it up when possible and stopped to stretch when needed (I think a further 4 or 5 times).

Saw the family again at 34KM, this time grabbing a 330ml bottle of water mixed with 40g of carb mix.

The last stop was around 41.5K ish, the hammys were well passed their sell by date at this point and it was a limp to the finish at around 4.30/km pace.

Surprisingly, through this happening, mentally I was all good. No real negative thoughts, just 'f*ck it, you're here and have already done 28K, keep it going and get to the finish, it's all good!'.

I've read a lot about running with a smile and tried to do that as much as possible even though the hamstring pain, I do think this really helped!

Finished with a distance of 42.47KM and a time of 02:51:57.

Post-race

Usual post-race shenanigans, grabbed a bottle of water, flopped over the barrier just after the finish line and had a quick moment of death whilst reflecting on what had just gone down.

Mixed thoughts of, 'damn, that's your first mara and you've just knocked out a 02:51', and 'what a waste of a good opportunity on a flat course with perfect weather to hit a 02:44' which I defo think was on the cards without the hamstring problem.

Moved on from the barrier to the Nike stand and grabbed 15 mins in some compression boots which is the first time I've tried something like that. The boots were great but all I could think about was how much I needed to go to the toilet.

Grabbed a quick pic with Jakob Ingebrigtsen (very nice guy!) and said congrats to his brother Kristoffer. Tried to talk to him about NSA however he could not have been less interested if he tried - fair enough after his 02:29.

Then moved on to around 1 million toilet trips which dominated the rest of my time in CPH.

To top everything off I lost my left race shoe somewhere between the bag drop zone and the kids playground so I'm now left to hopping around in one carbon.

Was it a success? Who knows, and to be honest, who cares! It's the Marathon. It's hard. Anything can happen. Especially on your first proper attempt. The legs are still attached, 2 days on they feel fine and I've lived to die another day.

What's next

Another marathon is the short answer - even with the issues pre/during/post-race I've come out of that confident I can go sub 02:40. A proper base block and another mara block and it'll be on the cards. Over-optimistic thinking, for sure, but you've got to be a dreamer!