Marius Bakken Goes Into Detail About Lactate Threshold Training

Unless you’re around my age you probably don’t remember Marius Bakken all that well. The Norwegian distance runner ran 13:06 for 5000m and I was a big fan of his because he was one of the first athletes to share his training logs and philosophy online. Bakken is retired now, works as a physician, and still runs a few days a week. He doesn’t blog as much any more but he recently wrote this very long and detailed post about the Norwegian model of lactate threshold training and lactate controlled approach to training that outlines the methodology followed today by folks like the Ingebrigtsen brothers and top triathletes like Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden. It’s a gold mine of information, history, and practical applications. (Pro tip: Print it out!)

“Training is naturally a balance of load, specificity, and adaptation,” Bakken writes. “In my own training, I tested as much as I could to find that maximum performance within my natural ability. Sometimes it went terribly wrong, sometimes I found out things that were contrary to common beliefs at the time. If you are eager to perform better and have not tried systematic threshold training as explained in this model, hopefully, you’ll enjoy the ride as much as I did.”