WARNING: SHAMELESS TOOTING OF OWN HORN AHEAD.
I started this blog last November while recovering from my first marathon (not to brag, but I broke 3 hrs), and my plan was for it to serve as an on-line training diary as well as a place to run my mouth, so to speak, about the issues of the day or sports or whatever. Then the three weeks off for recovery turned into three months, and I was too ashamed to admit I hadn't been running and abandoned the training log part.
Well, today is an exception, because this evening is the first time I've had a real quality workout in about six weeks (with perhaps the exception of this race, which was a PR for me despite having dead legs) and I have to share it with someone. So I'm training for the Columbus Marathon again. Just for backstory, my workouts the past three weeks have been crap. My knee has been killing me, so I've been cutting my quality workouts. The past two weeks I've only run 4 days each. Then two Sundays ago I had to cut my planned 20 mile run short to 15 miles due to heat and knee pain. Last Thursday, things started to turn around. I had two decent workouts on Friday and Saturday, then I did 21 miles on Sunday at 7:48 pace, somewhat faster then I expected.
Tonight I decided to do Yasso 800s, named after insane adventure runner Bart Yasso. The way it works is you try to do some number of 800s (start at four, work up to ten) in a min:sec time equivalent to your hrs:min marathon goal time, with a jog for that same amount of time in between each. According to Runner's World, this workout is an incredibly accurate predictor of your actual finish, i.e., however fast you can do 10x800 in min:sec is how fast you can run a marathon in hrs:min.
My goal* for Columbus is 2:52 (which will qualify me for Boston), so I planned to run 8x800 in 2min 52 sec., with a 2min 52sec jog in between each (next week I'll do 9x800, and the week after I'll do 10x800). I'm thrilled because if this predictor is as accurate as RW claims, I'm going to exceed my goal. Here's how my repeats shook out:
2:51; 2:48; 2:46; 2:45; 2:43; 2:42; 2:40; 2:35
I warmed up and warmed down with two miles. I'm hoping that I'm starting to round into racing shape at the right time. I really only have the rest of this week and next week for hard workouts, then I'm in my taper. We'll see.
*My real goal is to not crap myself, which is pretty much my goal every time I go running. But I digress.
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