61 Days to Boston

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.

 

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