Yasso 800's for marathon

shels4ever

Came across this on runners world has anyone ever tried this out, seem an odd way to gague you marathon time .

http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-244-255-624-0,00.html

Zuppy

Bart!!! Ah the man!

On a serious note, as a way to predict, it works pretty well. (for me anyway)
As a workout for marathon, it seems to be long enough intervals (on a lower limit) IMO

RoyMcC

Tried these. Personally I found them way too easy. I can knock off 10 x 800m @4min quite comfortably but a 4-hour marathon is beyond my present capabilities

hunnymonster

Roy what recovery do you take between the 800's? If you find 10x800 easy, reduce the recovery time until the last couple feel toughish.

RoyMcC

hunnymonster wrote: »

Roy what recovery do you take between the 800's? If you find 10x800 easy, reduce the recovery time until the last couple feel toughish.

Equal (4 min) recovery time. Yes, a shorter recovery time would give a better workout. However I really just wanted to flag up that achieving the Yasso target session won't necessarily translate over the longer, marathon distance. Not for everybody anyway.

Just as plugging a 'best time' for (say) a Half into a predictor such as McMillan is problematical.

hunnymonster

fair point.

cfitz

There's an article about them on the McMillan site. It says something like they only work if you're training properly for a marathon. Someone like Alistair Cragg would probably predict a world record off that session. Even though it seems to be a fairly accurate predictor, it sounds completely random to me!

ike

I started doing these in the run up to Xmas but ony got a far as 8 Intervals - I did them with a 2 min rest and was just on the edge of recovery certainly not rested anyway. I averaged 3:10 per 800 no I'm not a 3:10 marathoner but I hope to get close to 3:20, but I definately plan to add this into the routine in the few months running up to Berlin.

I think the trick is to watch the pacing I could probably do 1 at 2:50 pace but that would screw up the remaining intervals so for me 3:10 seemed on the edge of comfortable to maintain all the way.

But then again I haven't been training too hard, I haven't done many long runs, fast runs, easy runs etc. So maybe when combined with a full marathon program, they might give a more realistic picture. I hope to try it anyway.

TFBubendorfer

I did one Yasso workout before the Cork marathon last year. The average time for the 800s was between 3:09 and 3:10.

I ran 3:09:37 in Cork! The prediction was so accurate that I didn't do them again for Dublin. I was spooked out by the accuracy.

copacetic

I think they are a good tool, but like all the predictors they assume that you have trained equally well for each distance. So predicting a time from them is only gonna work if you do the training to support the time.

Personally I think you need times at 5k, 10k, half marathon all predicting a similar marathon time and then a few 20 mile runs with marathon pace finishes at this pace, before you can have any confidence in the time you are going for.