800's And So Much More

It has been so long since I have blogged, and I have so much to talk about... I guess I will load up on posts this weekend rather than talk about everything in one long post.

This past Wednesday was my first official week of speed work for my marathon training. I decided to start my speed work with Yasso 800's for a couple of reasons. I am using the 800's more as a measure of improvement throughout the training and then, about three weeks out from the marathon, as a predictor of my finish time.

I did 5x800 with 400 recovery. I am lucky enough to have a high school track within cycling distance that is open to the public during off hours. I used the bike ride there as part of my warm up and felt good.

Here are the times for those five intervals:

4:22
4:27
4:47
4:41
4:33

Before you say anything, I know... I am slow. But I am satisfied with those times for my first time out. I did the first one a bit too fast, and died out later on, but I now have a point of reference to work from.

Along with other speed work, I have three more 800's planned during my marathon training. I will build up to 10x800 and that final workout will tell me how much I have improved and how prepared I am for the marathon. According to the great Bart Yasso, the average time for that 10x800 will be close to my finish time in the marathon.

So if you take those five intervals I did it looks like I should be able to finish the marathon in about 4:34. Hopefully with my training I make some progress to better that time a bit.

So my training is still going good. My mileage is steadily increasing and I feel good. I am getting good results from my quality runs and look forward to all that is ahead. I'll be back this weekend to talk more about everything running, and some that is not.

Training By Time

I have only been running a short time, but ever since I started I have read many times over that it is best for beginners to run by time rather than distance. It is beneficial in different ways to run for thirty minutes rather than run for, say, three miles.

It has taken me an entire year to heed that advice.

A couple of weeks ago, when coming back from a slight foot injury, I decided to run by time and not worry about distance at all. I have not had a bad run since then. (knock on wood)

There are a couple of different things, both mental and physical, that make training by time better for me. First of all the body does not know what one mile or one kilometer is, but it does know what thirty minutes or an hour is. Time is more realistic to the body, and the body knows the difference between minutes rather than miles.

Another aspect for me is mental. Twenty minutes will always be twenty minutes, but one mile can be anywhere from eight minutes to eleven minutes for me. As long as I keep my pace the way it needs to be for that particular run, my mind is in it better because I know how much longer I am running for.

Another thing that I tend to do is run fast to get that first mile done with, or speed up to finish that last mile. This can mess up my workout and I will completely fail to reach my goal for that run. Now if I focus on time, then it does not matter how fast I run, that last five minutes will always be five minutes.

One of my problems however, is that I am a stat whore. I love compiling numbers and measuring the distance I run each week and month. No problem there, I can always plan my runs by time and log them by mileage.

Problem solved.

So the training plan I have written up for my first marathon starts next week. Every run is by time rather than distance, even the speed workouts. The only workouts where I am measuring my runs by distance are the Yasso 800's.

I will be doing five of them starting at 6x800 and working up to 10x800 a few weeks before the marathon. I am interested in seeing how well that will measure preparedness for the marathon.

Speed Work

Today I had a day off work. So the plan was to get up early and go to the track for some speed work. Besides some speed play here and there, I have never really done organized speed work. So today was the day.

When the alarm went off, I was cold and tired and achy. So I turned the alarm off and went back to sleep. My kids woke me up about an hour and a half later and after a little moving around I knew that I needed to get out and run as soon as possible or else it would not happen at all.

I have been wanting to find my mile time, so the plan was to do a time trial and find that. Then I wanted to do three or four Yasso 800's just to see where my fitness is and have something to measure improvement as I get closer to the marathon.

I did not feel like driving to the track so I ran in the neighborhood. I still planned to do the mile but instead of 800's I would do three half mile intervals.

I warmed up as I was making my way to a good street to run on. I got to the corner and I was off. I ran hard and made an effort not to look at my Garmin at all. I just focused on the run and tried to keep my form good. It seemed to take a long time to finish this mile. When my watch finally beeped I was all too happy to slow down.

My mile time was 8:12.

Not incredibly fast, but I remember the very first time I tried to "run" a mile it took me about fifteen minutes and I could not even run the whole thing. In fact I think I walked more than half of it at the time.

So time for intervals. I decided to change it up and do four quarter mile intervals with quarter mile recoveries. I realized after the fact that I would do better with shorter recoveries, but live and learn.

Here are the interval times for those:

2:16
2:10
2:15
2:08

For some reason, I think I could have done them a little harder. I do not want to push myself into an injury, so I do not plan on doing speed work every week until I actually start my marathon training program.

But I do enjoy speed work... at least I do as of right now. That will probably change when I am pushing myself even more. I did a total of four miles this morning and mentally is was so much easier than running four miles at an easy pace because it was mixed up so much.

It feels good!