Yasso 800s

I started serious speedwork in Jan 2001. My then coach, Tom McGlynn (http://www.focusnfly.com), used to put me through the paces with hard workouts. All that labor paid off in 2002, 2003 and 2004 when I ran Personal Bests from 5K all the way up to the Marathon.

It's been 2 years now since I stopped doing any sustained speedwork. I decided, a few weeks ago, to restart.

This time around I decided to forego traditional VO2Max & Lactate Threshold (LT) workouts. Instead I chose to test the efficacy of something I had heard and read about last year.

Yasso 800s is what the repeats are called.

The first workout was 2 weeks ago. I decided to start very conservatively. 4x800 was what I was going to do. It was a hot Tuesday afternoon. I had a friend do 6x400 while I did my workout. My splits were a rather hard 3:40, 3:39, 3:39 and 3:40. I had deliberately chosen 3:40 as the target marathon time. I don't believe I am in that kind of shape but I can always think big can I not?

There was a hiatus of 1 week before my next workout, this past Tuesday. I decided to 4x800 again at 3:30 pace. This time around, the workout was a lot harder. My splits were 3:31, 3:30, 3:29 and 3:28. Curiously enough, the hardest part was not the last few meters but the section from 200 to 300m. Very strange.

I want to try and run the Helen Klein 50m in a time that's at least 60 minutes faster than the 10:12 I did last year. I also want to try and run the California International Marathon in Sacramento on Dec 3 in under 3:50 if I can. It's been some time since I've run a sub-4 hour marathon and I have lost confidence in my ability to do so of late. This is because I decided to devote most of last year and this year to running ultras at the back of the pack.

Stay tuned about the Yasso 800s.