61 Days to Boston
I screwed it up a bit but not totally. Now I understand what coach was talking about last time I had this workout. My brain does funny things with paces when I’m preoccupied. I’ve been doing this so long you’d think it would be burned in by now.
I remember last time I couldn’t understand why he told me to do the workouts exactly as he laid them out. I did the right number of reps I just shortened the recovery reps to get it done faster because I didn’t have enough time. Now I realize I screwed up the pace then too.
I had a set of 10 Yasso 800’s to do today. It’s a challenging workout. Not terrible but challenging. The way it works is that you run the 800’s (or ½ miles) at your goal marathon finish time expressed in minutes. Therefore a 3:30 goal marathon finish for me would mean running 800 (or ½) in 3:30.
Somehow my brain went sideways on the pace calculation. I did these on the treadmill. If you do them on the treadmill you have to figure out the math first. It’s not hard math. But, I guess, with all the other things on my mind, I spaced it out.
If a train leaves Hopkinton…
Let’s all do it together: If I have a goal marathon of 3 hours and 30 minutes that’s a Yasso 800 of 3 minutes and 30 seconds. If I run 3:30 for ½ mile then I’m going to run 7 minutes flat as the minutes per mile pace. SEVEN MINUTE MILES, stupid!
To translate to the treadmill that means running 3 minutes and 30 seconds at a pace of 7-minute miles. (or if you really want to geek it’s 8.5 mph.)
I didn’t totally screw it up, but I partially screwed it up. For some reason my brain short-circuited on the pace and I started doing the Yasso’s at an 8:00 flat pace. I guess my brain decided 3:30 marathon versus 3:30 800. I was a little bit into the 4th rep wondering why coach gave me such an easy workout, “He must have his reasons”, when it struck me that I was supposed to be running a 7:00 flat. So I finished out the set at 7:00 flats.
That was a bit more challenging.
Still a good workout.
Did the full 3:30 recovers, typically at a 9-9:30 pace. 8 min warm up, 8 min cool down.
Stretching after. Purple smoothie down the gullet to give the machine something to work with.
Then out of curiosity I went back and looked at the last time I did the workout and realized why Coach was yelling at me. I made a similar mistake then and ran them at a 7:30 pace.
Everything seems to be holding together. Feel pretty good. Knees ok now that I modified my stretching. Weight good. Core strong. Going to be a big week.
One of the reasons I screw up these workouts is I get stressed trying to squeeze them into may day. The pure run time of this workout is an hour and a half. Throw in the changing, showers and stretching you’re close to 2 hours.
That’s a good chink of time to find the opportunity. I have a late call today so I jumped out at lunch. Usually I’ll do these at night on the treadmill. There isn’t much daylight this time of year and there is a lot of nasty weather. For technical workouts like this, I’m already challenged as you can see, so hitting the treadmill simplifies things significantly.