Yasso's, are they the best use of my time? (Read 935 times)

Now that I'm a father I want to make the best use of my time running. I feel guilty if I leave my wife at home too long while I'm out running. Goal time for a marathon on a perfect day is 2:50. I finally found the time to try a Yasso 800 workout. Damn it took FOREVER. I followed the rule of marathon pace -5 seconds that was too easy so I dropped it down to -10 seconds, shortened the rests, and ran one extra 800 because I felt good. http://www.runningahead.com/logs/64cf3fe91ca547dbbadf40dc463ba1c2/workouts/6c0fc167bf8e46d29ea07b257b5fbb4e I was wondering if anyone knows of a better variation of the Yasso workout… For example: 10x800 at marathon goal time with 5/8 rest time.

Agree with Mikey. However - it was a decent set of intervals. If you want to stick with 800s.... forget the Yasso rest dictum and decrease the recovery to about 30 secs.

Here is a link from RW. http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-244-255-624-0,00.html Sounds like he uses the workout in the several months leading up to the marathon and feels like it helps him figure out what kind of shape he's in, but not necessarily a staple of training.

Exactly. It's a diagnostic workout, not a foundation of his training.

I'm thinking that if 1 hour is "forever" then maybe the marathon isn't the right event for your life circumstances. That's about the shortest run I ever do. With 4 kids and a full time job I try to do 90% of my running before anyone else is up...well truth be told most of them are at the breakfast table when I get in most days but you get the idea. But to answer the question at hand, I can think of maybe a thousand different workouts that would be better marathon workouts than 10 x 800. Like a moderate to hard 10-miler over a rolling course.

Ok forever is an exageration. The workout was 55 minutes of running and about 30 minutes of standing around. I'm just not used to standing around that much. A typlcal interval session for me is usually 1/4 to 1/2 rest time. It was a good confidence builder, but I was sitting here thinking I could have ran a hard 12-14 mile run in that same amount of time.

Your training looks pretty solid. Looks to me like you are ready to go faster than 2:50, maybe a lot faster. It's not the Yasso's that tell me this so much as your easy paces, and the paces that you are holding on your long runs. You're either gonna run 2:45 or you are gonna blow up in training. How do you feel at 70mpw with this schedule? When's the marathon?

My next marathon is in two weeks. 70 miles feels pretty good, I topped out at 83 miles between a Wednesday and a Tuesday and I was really sore after that, but that may have had more to do with all of the extreme hills I was pounding.

Why did you have any stannding around time? Like I said 15 minutes of jogging time (Running easy pace) - But I like either longer intervals or shorter intervals than 800's ... OK truthfully, I like longer intervals 5 minutes give or take or at lest run 6x1200 with 90 seconds rest (IE easy running) inbetween.

I never read anything about yasso, I just took the term "yassos 800s" and said - how does it make sense to run this as a decent workout. I can not believe he would have you not run easy between sets and if you want to get the maximum v02 max benefit, I would think 60-90 second jogs at maximum.

I never read anything about yasso, I just took the term "yassos 800s" and said - how does it make sense to run this as a decent workout. I can not believe he would have you not run easy between sets and if you want to get the maximum v02 max benefit, I would think 60-90 second jogs at maximum.

This seems to come up over and over and over... First of all, NO it's not the best workout that you should be doing. I just talked to Greg McMillan about this "workout". Someone posted the link to Yosso 800; I believe somewhere along the way, it should point out that "THIS WORKOUT IS A PREDICTOR". I've discussed this with Bart himself a couple of years ago; far too many people use this as a simple workout. IT IS NOT A SPEED TRAINING (thought it COULD help you run faster); IT IS NOT A VO2MAX WORKOUT (though it COULD help increase VO2Max depending on what you'd been doing). It only allows you to see if you're in shape to run such-and-such marathon time you are shooting for IF you could perform this workout (not by decreasing or increasing the number of reps; not by decreasin or increasing the recovery) COMFORTABLY, then you SHOULD BE ABLE TO run that marathon time. So in fact, assuming you took the purpose of this workout wrongly, which obviously you had, this could be the worst workout you can do simply because you're not doing it right or you're not fulfilling that purpose.