Do You Yasso?

As mentioned on the Perpetually Rungry Facebook Page, this  week I ran Yasso 800s on the track. Invented by Bart Yasso (coincidence?), Chief Running Officer for Runner's World magazine and an accomplished runner. Yasso 800s are 10 x 800m with an easy jog recovery equal time as the interval between 800s.

The theory is that the time of your SLOWEST 800m interval of the 10 is a good predictor of your marathon finish time. For example, if you complete your slowest 800m in 3 mins 59 seconds = 3 hour 59 minute marathon finish time (my goal).

There is some debate as to it's accuracy as a predictor and also about its benefits as a marathon workout.  As I have never used Yasso 800s to predict my marathon, I thought I would give it a shot this training cycle and see if it predicts MY finish time. I plan to run this workout 2-3 more times before CIM. 

Yasso 800s Splits:

1. 3:54 (7:51/mile)
2. 3:51 (7:45/mile)
3. 3:54 (7:51/mile)
4. 3:52 (7:47/mile)
5. 3:50 (7:43/mile)
6. 3:49 (7:41/mile)
7. 3:50 (7:43/mile)
8. 3:44 (7:31/mile)
9. 3:47 (7:37/mile)
10. 3:43 (7:29/mile)

Thoughts:
My slowest split was 3:54, well below my goal marathon finish time. This workout is meant to be a VO2max workout and I did not run my splits at a VO2max pace. My split times based on VO2max should be between 3:27-3:36, but I paced myself using split times for my goal marathon finish time. 

It was still hard. I'll run it again in 6 weeks or so. Maybe a little faster.