Yasso 800s? Not Today…

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After a positive Strendurance workout last night (the second of Phase B), I’d planned to hit the track this morning and run one of my favorite workouts - the Yasso 800s. The idea of the “Yasso’s” is to run 10 x 800 meter repeats at as constant a pace as you can manage. The time you spend running these 800 meters in minutes and seconds, is a prediction of how fast you can run your marathon in hours and minutes.

For example, say you do your Yasso 800s at an average of 3 minutes 15 seconds - this would predict a marathon finish time of 3 hours 15 minutes. Sound too good to be true? As long as you’ve trained for your marathon correctly and included the necessary speed work and long runs, Yasso’s are generally a great indicator of your possible finish time. I’ve completed this workout several times before marathon attempts and the results have been fairly accurate.

I ran 2 miles to the local track carrying a bottle of water to use between 800s. The temperature was a surprising 67°F and I knew I’d soon get thirsty and need to replenish lost fluids. The warm up felt good and after 5-10 minutes of stretching I was ready to go.

However, just 300m into the first interval, a shooting pain in my right shin confirmed that the Yasso’s were probably a bad idea. Maybe the pain would have gone away if I continued the 800’s, but to be honest with just 8 days to go until the Shamrock Marathon, I decided not to risk anything and halted the workout. Maybe I’m getting wiser in my old age, or maybe the bulldog in me was having an off day…

I decided to “just go for a run” instead and ended up logging an extra 10.5 miles (click the MotionBased graphic below for full details). The rain sprinkled on and off the whole time I was running, but was actually very refreshing in the slightly humid conditions. However, the heavens opened just one mile from the house and I ended up getting absolutely drenched! No worries, it turned out to be a fun run and on reflection I know I made the right decision regarding the track workout.