Team World Vision Training - 7 weeks to go

Good news from this week: after taking five days-in-a-row off last week and forgoing a long run for a long hike, I’ve been feeling great. The ankle that had been bothering me didn’t hurt at all last week including during a hard-ish workout, a 5K race and a 12 mile long run.

The workout I did this week was Yasso 800s. If you haven’t heard of them, Yasso 800s, named after runner Bart Yasso, are a marathon predictor workout. Basically, you convert your marathon goal time from hours:minutes to minutes:seconds. Then you run 800m (half mile) at your prescribed pace. For example: if your marathon goal is three hours, you would run each 800 in three minutes. In between 800s you jog an equal amount of time.

I’ve done this workout before and found that it predicts a marathon time of about five minutes faster than I actually run (which isn't unusual). Yasso 800s aren’t necessarily a great workout for marathon training—not that they’re not helpful, but I wouldn’t do them too many times as there are only so many hard workouts one can do before a marathon. For example: long runs with the last 6 - 10 miles at goal marathon pace or tempo runs at slightly faster than race pace are more beneficial for marathon training.

You can read all about the workout here: "The Real History of the Yasso 800s," or simply Google, "Yasso 800s" to read numerous opinions on the workout,

I’m thankful for a good bounce back week of training after spending the previous week with a sore ankle. I’m planning on putting in a few more miles this week and am hoping to keep staying injury-free.