Yasso 800's

One more article about Sunday's Berlin Marathon. Geb's training segment sounded amazing, but weather look HOT (forecasted 79 - yikes!). Also, now that I am Brooks sponsored, am wanting to pass along the good word and for anyone interested in picking up Brooks equivalents of the current non-Brooks shoes that you wear, here is a cool chart that displays shoe equivalencies:

Last night, went out to the track to do our scheduled Yasso 800's. For those not familiar with the concept, you take your goal marathon time and basically convert it to minutes and seconds instead of hours and minutes, and do reps based on that. So my marathon goal of 3 hours and 10 minutes translates into reps of 3 minutes and 10 seconds - 10 of those with no longer than 3 minutes and 10 second breaks in between. Weather was sunny and high 70's, but with the days getting shorter it cooled down pretty quickly. Nice cool breeze, so was pretty comfortable doing the workout. Got up to the track, legs were sore especially my groin, and did some dynamic stretching to get loosened up and fire up those fast twitch muscles. Did 1/2 mile warmup with Crystal, and started the workout. First few reps were pretty easy - usually do 800 reps in 2:45-2:55, so was going 15 seconds slower. We jogged a slow quarter in between all the reps to keep the legs going. Crystal and I were alternating the inside lap every rep, so was making the time go by faster. She was apparently feeling pretty good, because she was blazing way ahead of me on her lead laps but I tried to maintain 3:10 pace for fear of fatigue later in the workout. The reps flew by, never felt uncomfortable and before we knew it we were almost done. Last couple, I knew we were in the home stretch so picked it up just to make the workout a little more challenging. Final rep, legs were a little tired but still fine, and coasted in. Quick cooldown, nice evening to get in a good track workout. Total mileage: 8 miles - splits were: 3:13 (my fault on letting up too early), 3:08, 3:07, 3:09, 3:09, 3:10, 3:08, 2:59, 2:54, 2:50.

Stretched for a while afterwards, hit the driving range with my buddy Nick and got a late night meal at Applebees. Just a perfect night to be outside, and so excited that fall is right around the corner (on my birthday actually!!!). Yasso 800's are said to be a good marathon indicator and I hope that is true, because we pretty much killed that workout. Legs feel ok this morning, but groin feels like garbage. Am pretty happy that we have a day off tonight, and looking forward to hanging out with Tim who is in town! Heavy weekend running with the 10 mile pace tomorrow and last 20 miler on Sunday. Then the glorious taper weeks begin :) And on a side note, this is my final weekend in my 20's, so will have to live it up as much as possible!