Yassos and Lung busters.

Monday 12^th November 2012

Running

2.62 Miles / 00:27:07 / 00:10:21 per mile

A Lunchtime interval session today and thankfully no foot pain.

A wee bit of a warm up run at a very easy pace and then 3 X  ½ mile intervals at target pace of 3.45 (7.30 / mile) and 3 minute recovery between sets, then a short cool down run.

Everything went well to plan and each of the sets was completed under target time – coming in at 3.26 / 3.24 / 3.24 for the 3 X ½ mile sets.

These sets are basically a type of interval training called Yasso 800s.

I think I have mentioned them before. Designed by Running Guru, Bart Yasso – they are designed to help improve your speed in working towards a marathon. Simply put, you decide on a target marathon time, e.g. 3h 45m and then translate that to a 800M interval at 3m 45s.

Very simple but effective.

I have tried these before and they are effective and hard work.

The problem is that I have never really stuck at it properly the whole way through a marathon training schedule.  This time I hope to; a) be injury-proof enough to get through the planned schedule, and b) keep up the Yassos each week, along with some other intervals planned to improve my speed over the 26.2.

The plan is to increase the number of repetitions that I can do at target pace.  Ideally not increasing the number until I can achieve all within target pace.

At the end of this week I have entered the Seeley Cup 10K race in Ormeau Park in Belfast.  I had always intended this to be a bit of a crack at a new PB for the distance as I had hoped to have some decent speed work training under my belt over the last 8 weeks.  Alas this was not to be the case, so expectations of a new PB are probably pie in the sky and I think that anything under 51 minutes will be a bloody good result for me.  I know that I could hold 3 or maybe even 4 miles at 8 min mile pace, but I have no idea how much I will detonate after that and how much time I am likely to loose as a result – but we shall see soon enough!

 

Swimming

Training session with Tri Club - 1650M (Sets)

 

This was a fairly tough session tonight.  Plenty of work on the legs tonight, mostly with the fins on.

The sets of 25M race sprints at the end were an absolute lung buster but great fun to have a bit of a smack down race.  I actually surprised myself at being able to move relatively quickly in the sprint, even though I lost mine.  Good fun though.

Last Week – saw me get back to running for the first time properly in a while.  I managed a nice slow run in London and then a good lunchtime run later in the week.  4 miles which included a 1 mile warm up and cool down sandwiched around 2 miles at sub 8min / mile pace.

It felt comfortable enough and pain free also, which was encouraging.  The pace was even well under 8 mins at about 7.45 per mile when I pushed on a bit.