Yasso, O, how I love thee.

Last Saturday I did a tempo run for 6.5 miles at a 7:45/mile pace. I would be lying if I didn't tell you that I thought I was going to puke and that I wanted to stop about every quarter mile (or less). Sleeping in is NOT worth it- this heat WILL KILL YOU. However, I finished. Sometimes that's all that matters.

Today I picked Darcy up at 6 AM (and in 57 degrees!!!) to run our first set of Yasso 800's on the track. IT. WAS. SWEET.

Don't know what Yasso 800's are? They are a speed workout that I'm choosing to believe in. You can read a little more about them here. In theory, according to the coach and marathoner Bart Yasso, the speed in which you can run 800 meters will determine how fast you can run a marathon. For example, if you can run 800 meters (or a half mile) in 4 minutes, you can run a 4 hour marathon. The same goes for a 3:30, or a 2:20, etc.


Darcy and I had the goal of running them at a 3:30. My splits for the 5 sets were as follows:

3:21, 3:26, 3:21, 3:30, 3:29

Right on goal!!! It had been awhile since the last time I researched them, so we didn't recover in the middle for as long as we should have. We did 400 meters at a recovery pace and then did our next set of 800's. What we SHOULD have done was recovered for the same amount of time as it took us to do the 800- IE, run 800 in 3:30, recover for 3:30. Next time that is what we'll do. We will continue adding 1 set of 800's to our workout until we get to 10. We will stop doing Yasso 800's 2 weeks before the marathon.

It was awesome and I can't wait to see how they help us in the marathon! Do any of you seasoned marathoners do Yasso 800's? Do you think they help you?

On another cool note, I have started doing something extra special :). In Kara Goucher's book she suggests saving $1 for ever mile you run. I thought this would be a great way to save up for running shoes/gear/races/BOSTON, so about 6 weeks ago I started saving. I don't have a lot of money right now, so $1 was too much for me; I decided that I would save 25 cents/mile. Today I went and opened up my own checking account with $82 in it!!!! I'm stoked!

Some of the money was bonus from another account I closed, but in the last 6 weeks I've managed to save 57 dollars. Yeah baby! Only about $418 more dollars and my flight to Boston will be paid for :). Now I just have to qualify...