Yasso 800s

Last Monday I ran Yasso 800s. Basically you run at one speed for 800 meters and then run at another speed for 800 meters then repeat for whatever distance you want to cover. In case you aren’t up on your metric system 800 meters is just shy of half a mile. That is a long sprint and you are ready to be done running fast by the end. If you want to run a 3 hour marathon you’d train so you can run 10 800 meter sprints in three minutes each with three minutes of slow jogging between each. So basically it is roughly 10 miles (less actually) of training that should get you ready for 26.2 miles of racing. Bart Yasso, a running coach and marathoner has been using these workouts for the last 20 years and a lot of runners swear by them as the key to good marathons.

Their are a couple of advantages of this system:

• You get to work in some speed work (which is the key to improving your overall times) and still get to cover some serious ground.
• Secondly you get to mix up what can be a monotonous run by changing your pace.
• It also forces you to focus on your pacing which helps improve your ability to maintain a steady speed

For my first time out with this system I ran slowly at more than 9 minutes per mile and then fast and less than 8 minutes per mile and covered just over three miles.  If I am to run a sub four hour marathon I should shoot for Yasso 800s at three minutes and 59 seconds or faster.  This works out to 7:58 min/mile.  But you only have to keep this pace up for a half mile at a time.  I’m thinking of incorporating these workouts into my sort-long Wednesday runs from time-to-time.  Right now the runs are at four miles, but by the end get up to ten miles.  I’ll add less than one Yasso 800 per week as the distance grows.  This should be a perfect way to build up both speed and keep running the distances I need to be able to finish.

 

Tags: Marathon, Running, Yasso 800s