Thursday, April 5, 2012

Yasso 800s Take 2

It was an exciting morning here. We had our new washer and dryer delivered! Can't wait to get started on the mountain of laundry piling up in the laundry room, thank goodness there is a door I can close to that disaster of a room.
After the delivery men left, Jordan and I left to check out the nearby highschool track. It was only a few miles away from our house, and it is apparently always open to the public. Sometimes tracks are hard to get access to, which annoys the heck out of me - aren't our tax dollars paying for these tracks? That means I should be able to run on it!
Anyways, I didn't start my warmup until around 9:30. It was 75 degrees and sunny. About two weeks ago, I completed the Yasso 800s wrkout, but only 8x800 at 3:09 pace. I wanted to run the same pace today, but to complete 10 repeats. Since Jordan was with me, he did the last 400 of each repeat to help me along. It is my goal to get him to participate in a series of races this summer that start at 1.8 miles and finish the season with a 10k. So this was a good workout for him as well.
After three repeats, I was already thinking of how to quit the workout early. I really had to focus on one repeat at a time and stop to take water (and dump it on my head) after each repeat. It is hard to go from running in chillier temps in Pittsburgh to over 80 degrees and direct sun on a black track that reflected every bit of sun durectly on you. The funny part was that while I was dying and sweating profusely, a local track team didn't even break a sweat wearing dark gray cotton tshirts and heavy basketball shorts. I was practically naked and felt like my body was on fire.
The first 5 repeats: 3:11, 3:12, 3:10, 3:11, 3:12. I felt very uncomfortable, but it was a relief mentally to get to the halfway point. After that, I started counting down backwards and it was a lot nicer that way.
I think we all have those workouts where you are just trying to hold on and play mental tricks on your body to get through it, and today was one of those days. I would have loved to run my intervals a couple seconds faster, but hanging on when you feel like quitting is a great mental exercise that you need to practice to race well. At least I told myself that when I wanted to stop.
The last five intervals:
3:11, 3:11, 3:13, 3:12, 3:10
Again, would have liked to run a few seconds faster, but was happy to run consistent times.
The workout totaled 10 miles for the day ( a shorter then average warmup and cool down because I'm tapering) and we rewarded ourselves with going to the Evans Diner, conveniently located right around the bend from one of my other favorite running parks. It was yummy as usual, but felt a little sick still from the workout.
On the way home, we took a drive around some of the neighborhoods. I am blogging from my phone on the E network so I'm not sure if it is going to show up or not, but we took two pictures from those pretty bridge my parents liked looking at while they were visiting. Looking out over the water, I felt really lucky to be living in such a pretty town. I also felt lucky to be do e with speed work for a few days!

5 comments:

  1. Hopefully Boston will be cooler on the day of the Marathon. I love the pictures! Just like
    "The bridges of Madison County" (have you read that one?) Anyhow, enjoy the new washer/dryer and laundry room.
    Joanne

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  2. Oh my gosh Caitlin, those are some wonderful splits! Congrats girl. And I totally know what you mean about how so much of the track stuff is mental.......Hitting the halfway point is huge, it gets easier from there for me for some reason.

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  3. What was your rest between each 800? I read you are supposed to jog a 400 but that seemed waaaaay to long to me. When I first did them I jogged 200m and as I got better I only jogged about 150 meters (doubled back so I started a new 800 every 100meters). What do you suggest?

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    1. The article I read said to run the rest as long as your intervals were, so for me that was about 3:10. It is a VERY long rest. When I am training for a marathon, I like lots of repeats, not as fast, and a short rest in between. This workout is different then most I have done. My friend and I did 10x800 at around 3:13 pace with 2 minutes rest and I think I liked that the best! Maybe try that one! You are going to run an awesome half!

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