Yasso 800s Challenge
Like many of you I am planning on doing a fall marathon and like many of you, I would love to know how fast I might expect to run in the marathon.
Several years ago Bart Yasso came up with the Yasso 800 workout where the minutes and seconds translate into the hours and minutes that you could roughly expect to run in the marathon.
As I was reading up on his workout, I found the best indicator is to run 10x800 with 400 recovery 5 to 6 weeks before your marathon.
I have modified my training schedule to include this workout and I am wondering if anyone else is interested in taking the same challenge with me.
All you have to do is let me know that you are in, then when you do the 800 workout drop me your 800 splits, and later send me your marathon time.
Everyone that takes up the challenge, I will include in my blog post and we see how close everyone comes their actually marathon time.
Is anyone else up for this challenge?
Comments
I came across an article by Greg McMillan recently talking about the Yasso 800's and in the article he agreed with my assessment that there is very little correlation between that workout and the full marathon; but regardless of that fact it does come very close to predicting most reasonably fit marathoners times in the full marathon. I'll be interested to see the results of your poll and see if it matches as closely as the poll Greg did in which that Yasso workout usually matched the peoples marathon time within a couple of minutes.
Incidently, I talked with a friend of Burt Yasso at a conference 2 years ago and he said that Yasso was as surprised as anyone in how well it works out. He just happened to be coaching a group of marathoners and had that workout in their training plan. After the marathon Yasso was reviewing the training block and results of the race and noticed the correlation between their 800 times for the workout and the marathon. He thought it curious enough that he wrote an article on it, and things sort of snowballed from there.
Cool stuff.
Mark H.
What about people who are more vo2 and can crush this workout? That's where my hold up with this is.
I think this workout only tends to work out for marathoners. That is people who are training specificly for a marathon. So their marathon fitness is there.
Obviously a guy or gal who is training for a 5k couldn't do a marathon in 2:26 just because they are can do this workout. But if a guy/gal has been training specificly for a marathon, doing the mileage, long runs, long tempos, etc. and then they do this workout, as Bill describes it, it does seem to come pretty close to the time they run in their marathon if their marathon conditioning is equivalent to their shorter distance conditioning. Its just happens to workout that way.
Again, I am not trying to say there is any real connection other than a funny numbers thing that tends to workout more often than not.
I'll stop now, sorry Bill wasn't tryng to highjack your blog.
Mark H.
10 x 800 with 400 jog is a classic VO2 Max Interval workout. If someone can do that workout in 2:26-2:27 then it would indicate they are in 15:30/32:30 type of shape. If you equate an equivalent time (using McMillan's or Daniels or MPR Tables) for the marathon you get about 2:28 (close to what Oyasso would predict). But of course you wouldn't be expected to run 2:28 unless you had done the marathon workouts as well as this VO2 Max one.
So post thoughts anytime. :)
So someone who runs an 17:00 5k = 5:29/mi pace divided by 2 = 2:45.
Might not be spot on, but it's pretty uncanny how close it can be.
If I am going to break 2:40 looks like I need to run about 16:40 for my 5k.
Humm, I am not sure that is going to happen considering that I will not be running any more 5ks this fall.
But based on my current times, looks like I am in the 2:42 to 2:44range.