Using 800s to determine your expected marathon time

A couple of years ago, I was reading an article about "Yasso 800s" and how this workout could help predict your marathon time. It seems that Bart Yasso was training a number of individuals for a marathon and as one their last workouts before the marathon, he had them do some 800 repeats. He meticulously tracked each of their splits in his log book. Then, after they had run their marathon, he just happened to be looking back at his log book. What jumped out was that the splits they ran for the 800s seemed to correlate to the hours and minutes of their marathon time.

For example, a 2 minute and 45 second 800 split would indicate potentially that the person could run a 2 hour and 45 minute marathon.

After reading the article at the time, I posted something here on my blog about it but never followed up to test the theory.

During my 6 hour solo drive back from OBX, there was plenty of time to think and one of the thoughts that kept getting turned over in my mind was this "Yasso 800" theory.

On Tuesday before OBX, I went to the track and ran 6 x 800. 5 of those 6 800s were run in the 2:45 to 2:46 range. Then, on Sunday, I ran a 2 hour and 46 minute marathon.

Pretty hard to shake the idea that the "Yasso 800" concept doesn't have at least some merit.

Of course, I am a single person and this was a single test.

Maybe during my next marathon training cycle, I will try it again. We just have to wait and see what happens.

 

Sharing one thought at time,

The Cool Down Runner