Did my first set of Yasso 800's today on the treadmill at the Y. Was supposed to do a 5 miler, maybe with some speed mixed in. Read about Yasso's online; I've heard about them for years. Decided to try it out. Shooting for 5 reps at 3:40 pace. Felt good after the first few and so added one extra. I could've done at least 2 more but didn't want to push it on the first time running this new workout.
Total distance 6 miles. 6x 880 yards at average 3:42, ((7:20 pace) one rep where I forgot to start watch screwed up the avg). 2:00 recovery in between @ 8:45 pace. Good stretch after plus got in a partial weight circuit...just not feeling the weight lifting recently, not concerned about this since running increase feels alot better than the lifting anyway.
After I finished the run, I saw my friend H at the gym and since he's an experienced marathoner I asked him about Yasso's and predicting marathon finish time. He said he's never had luck with prediction's for marathon because he's mostly a shorter distance racer. Ditto for me. This got me to researching a bit farther online tonite. Seems even Yasso says that the 800's are not a workout to build up for a marathon. It's more like you have to do the long runs for stamina, LT efforts, and some marathon-goal-pace longish runs. Then the 800's confirm your conditioning. That's a good perspective for me since today's workout seemed easy but I know there's no way that I have enough endurance at this point to go out and do a 3:40 (or so) marathon right now.
I plan on running this workout again in 3 or 4 weeks. I'll shoot for 7 or 8 reps, just a smidge faster too. Also Yasso says recovery period should be equal time as effort, so I can almost double the rest time, which ought to ensure success again next time out, although that'll also increase the total distance to 9 miles(probably). Since long distance stamina is still where I have to focus, I will definitely hit a long run of 12 or 13 prior to my next Yasso 800's session.
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well i can (finally) get around to 1 of your questions here... i, too, have read a good bit about yasso's predicting your marathon time - if your goal time is a 3:40, build up to running 10 repeats at 3:40 each and that will get you to your goal on race day. i tend to lean more towards the "it's not an accurate prediction" side of the argument, but i still did them because it's a good workout. since you are actually running faster than what your goal pace needs to be, you get a boost in confidence and a little extra speed certainly can't hurt. i think the max reps i did was 8, but that was still a mental breakthrough for me as i continued to push myself through another rep and afterwards when i realized i had survived.
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