Yassos Schmassos

On Tuesday we did a track workout. We did 4 Yasso 800s. Yasso whats? Yeah, that's what I was thinking. All this running mumbo-jumbo. An 800 is two times around the track. Supposedly they are good predictors of what your marathon time can be. We were told on Tuesday that we should try to run all 4 Yassos in our marathon pace. So I just ran comfortably. Turns out, after doing some research, you are supposed to try to run the 800s quickly and that will predict your marathon time (for example, if you run the 800s in 4 minutes, 30 seconds then you will be able to run the marathon in 4 hours, 30 minutes). I ran all the 800s between 4:40 and 4:50, but I was really trying to pace myself. I could've run them slightly faster, I'm sure. Maybe we'll do that workout again someday down the road and now I know how to do them.

I've been doing some research about some other ways to predict your race time and one of them is to double your half-marathon time and add 7 minutes. So, I finished the half in 2:09. Doubling that equals 4:18 and adding 7 minutes equals 4:25. We'll see if I can do the next set of Yassos in that amount of time.

My personal goal is to finish under 4:45. I'd really like to be around 4:30 but I'm trying to be realistic with the hills and the distance in general.

The temperatures dropped today, which makes me so unmotivated to go out for my 5 mile run today. That, and I have a meeting after school that will last until about 5, which makes me even more unmotivated since I won't be home until around 6. Maybe I won't run 5 miles, but I have to get some sort of run in. I have 10 miles coming up on Saturday, which we are doing downtown, which means hills. So skipping today's run is not an option. I will do it and then I will reward myself with last night's episode of Lost!