Week 9, Day 1

Today's workout was supposed to be 6-8 Yasso 800s. Yasso 800s are a marathon-predictor workout popularized by Bart Yasso of Runners' World. The theory is that the amount of time in minutes and seconds that it takes you to run each of a set of ten 800 meter repeats translates into the time in hours and minutes that it will take you to run your marathon. So if you can run ten 800 meter repeats in 4:00 each, then you can run a 4:00 marathon.

I've done these before. If you are using them as a weekly speed workout, you start out about ten weeks before your race, and you just do four repeats the first week. Then you add a repeat on each week until you get up to ten, and you do that last workout 10-14 days before your race.

I've had some success with these. I haven't always made it all the way through the 7 weeks of doing them. When I qualified for Boston, I did my Yassos on the indoor track the Cincinnati Sports  Club.

I've always done them as half-mile repeats instead of 800s. A half-mile is a little further than an 800, so I figure, all the better. If I can run that time but go a little farther, maybe it's even more likely that I'll achieve my goal.

Greg McMillan says that in his experience, the Yassos tend to predict an actual time that is about five minutes slower than the repeat suggests. So, that's another reason that my little farther, little faster half-mile isn't such a bad thing, I assume.

Most recently, I've done my Yassos on the treadmill. But it's always better if you can let your body dictate the pace instead of relying on a machine. And it is a gorgeous day today. So after the dog walk around the park, I packed up my gear and headed to the Lunken bike trail.

I decided to wear my fanny pack with a bottle of ice water, and at the last minute I threw in a GU pack. It was about 11 am when I started running. The bike trail is just about 5 miles around, mostly flat, with markers every half-mile.

I really wasn't feeling all that great today and had a hard time making myself get out there for this one. I am tired from the weekend of dog showing, and also probably the gin & tonic followed by the beer last night and not getting as much sleep as I need didn't  help. But I have to make myself do the key workouts if I want to qualify for Boston or at least run better than I have the last few years.

Here's what I did:

Started with a slow warmup until I hit the 1.5 mile marker. This got me up the big hill---there is just  one short, steep hill heading up to the back side of the loop, and another less steep one coming back down to Wilmer Ave.---so I would be able to do the repeats mostly on the flat. That was about 1.6 miles of running, which I did in 16:54 or 10:31 pace, a good warmup.
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First repeat, .49 mi. in 3:49 (too fast!)
Recovery of .35 mi. in 3:51
I was looking at my watch a lot during that first repeat, thinking I was not going fast enough! But actually, it was much too fast.

For the recoveries, I walked for about 30 seconds past the marker, then jogged for a minute, then turned around and jogged back to the preceding mile marker, then jogged maybe 15-30 seconds past it, then turned around and jogged to the mile marker, where I started the next repeat. So after each half-mile fast repeat, I was doing a recovery a little bit out and a little bit back, and starting up again where the last repeat ended. This enabled me to get all 6 repeats plus the warmup in over the five mile loop.

Second repeat, .48 mi. in 3:56
Recovery of .36 in 3:54
I was stressing out because it seemed like every time I looked at my watch I was going slower than the 8:20 pace that would be optimal, but in the end I was still faster than I was supposed to be.

Third repeat, .49 mi. in 3:57
Recovery of .31 in 3:20
I finally stopped looking at my watch and tried to just gauge my effort as what I should feel like in a 5k, since my experience is that Yasso 800s roughly translate to 5k race pace. I think this is the one where I caught up and passed a woman who had gone by me at what I thought was a pretty brisk pace on my way back for the recovery.

Fourth repeat, .47 mi. in 4:03
Recovery of .39 in 4:12
Funny about the slight variations in distance according to the GPS. I wonder which is more accurate, the road markers or the GPS?

I really wanted to stop at this point. Besides the not having felt so great at the start, there was the effect of having run the first three repeats at a pace that was probably too fast.

Fifth repeat, .52 mi. in 4:22
Recovery of .34 in 4:01
This one was slow but I missed the half-mile marker (or there wasn't one) so I ended up running a little further than I was supposed to. This one ended near the airport terminal where you run down the hill and cross the street. Maybe there isn't a marker there? I can't remember. So I just stopped when I realized I'd gone farther than a half-mile per the GPS.

At this point I decided that it was time to have that GU after all. Better late than never! On the recovery, since I did not know where the half-mile marker was supposed to be, I just kept going forward until I hit four minutes, and then decided I would do the last repeat...wait, I don't even really remember what I decided now. Did I do it based on distance? Or time? Or did I keep going until I hit the next marker and then start? Probably not since the recovery was only .34.

Sixth repeat, .47 in 4:06
This one was a little short but I thought that made up for the last one being a little long. I think I did it based on counting, since I had noticed during the previous repeats that if I slowly counted to 180, it roughly came out to a half-mile of running. I'd see the marker when I got to 180. So for this one I just counted to 180 and stopped running when I hit it, since I was now so out of sync with the mile markers. So it came up a little short but close. Actually, it was the same distance as the fourth repeat, so maybe it was about right anyway.

This put me pretty much back to the start of the loop, so I just kept going until I hit the first half-mile marker, then turned around and jogged back to the car. I took a couple of walking breaks in there, too. When I got to the car, I was close to 7.5 miles so I kept going a few feet so I would get that. No real reason to do that but I did. So the cool down was 1.17 miles in 13:33, or 11:33 pace.

Total workout was 7.51 miles in 1:13:57. One thing I should have done was packed a little cooler with another water bottle or Gatorade or a Picky Bar or something to have right when I finished. Yes, it is only a three mile drive back home, but it would have been nice to have a little something before I had to get in the car.

Back home, I had my chocolate milk and then I had a frozen meal for lunch. Didn't ice my knee. It's not bothering me, but really, I just forgot about it. I'm feeling pretty wiped out. It was a hard workout. But, it's not supposed to be easy. The main thing is, I did it.

I'm not sure if there are any more Yasso workouts included in this training schedule, but if there are, next time I will remember to have a GU a lot sooner, I will spend less time looking at my watch, and I will remember to bring a little something to drink before I drive home.