Thursday, January 19, 2012

Ode to the Yasso 800s

yasso

It’s that time again for the Yassos. They have been missed. If you remember, Yasso’s are half-mile repeats at your projected marathon time, which is not the same as your marathon pace. For example, if you were aiming for a 4 hour marathon (9:10 pace) you would run your half mile repeats in 4 minutes flat (8:00 pace). You work up to doing 10 x 0.5 miles at marathon time pace. For me that is 6:00 minute pace (I want to run a 2:59 marathon – 6:52 minute per mile).

There is some pseudoscience going on here but they do seem to work. If you have the necessary endurance and can complete 10 Yassos, you should be ready for your marathon.

Today was the first session of Yassos in my marathon build. It was just 6 repeats and they felt great. Sure they were challenging but not over the top, insurmountable. The temperature had dropped and that certainly helped out on the trace.

I nailed them.

Splits:

1. 3:01 (slow start)

2. 2:54

3. 2:55

4. 2:55

5. 2:53

6. 2:55

4 comments:

TriMOEngr said...

Awesome splits! Read Yasso's book recently and how he kind of "stumbled" onto these workouts. Need to find a track sometime to just see what my Yasso times would look like (read: probably ugly).

Anonymous said...

That's a really interesting concept...

Ransick said...

I think I might try these. I've been wondering what type of track workouts I should be doing to improve my half marathon time. Thanks!

Lindsay said...

yasso's have always been one of my favorite workouts. i like the "easy math" and how it correlates to your goal marathon time.

great splits!