Yasso 800s and my WR prediction

The White Rock Marathon is only 11 days away.  This will be my 4th consecutive White Rock.  This morning I ran my last Yasso 800s leading up to White Rock.  Yasso 800s are an interval training workout that also serves as a predictor of marathon finish times.  (See my entry on Yasso 800s from this time last year here.)

This morning I averaged a 3:35 800.  The best thing about it is that if I leave out the first interval (I wasn't quite warmed up yet), intervals 2-10 ranged from 3:31 to 3:36.  I am encouraged by this consistency and by the strength of the latter intervals.  My normal pattern on intervals or tempo runs is to taper off with slower times at the end, and to be inconsistent in pace throughout. 

So based on the Yasso 800s philosophy, this should predict a 3:35 finish at White Rock.  This is actually pretty encouraging; my marathon PR is 3:35, set at White Rock 2009.  There are lots of factors, and Yasso 800 times are no guarantee, but I have been putting in more miles more consistently in the months leading up to WR  than I did last year.  (I'm at 87 consecutive days of running, and counting.)  Maybe, just maybe, I have another 3:35 marathon in me.  

50 mile week

A decent week of training last week.  The week before, I was at church camp with the boys.  It was scheduled to be a low-mileage week anyway, but I didn't even get in the short runs I had planned.  Last week I was back to normal, and even got a 20 miler in.  This is the first week I have gotten in 50 miles since January (except for the 50 miles runs in February and March).

I starting putting together a schedule for training for White Rock.  I am basing it on a 20 week plan in Bart Yasso's book My Life on the Run.  He uses a 10 day cycle rather than the tradition 7 day, so it's a bit trickier to plan, and will be trickier to implement, since long runs will be on different days each week.  He says with the 10 day cycle, older runners have longer to recover between long runs thus can run faster.  Of course, this first week of training I will be in Hawaii, so we'll see how well I get my runs in.

I will once again be aiming for a Boston qualifying time at White Rock.  Maybe this will be the year to do it!

White Rock Marathon 2008: My First Marathon

With White Rock coming up one week from today, I thought it would be fun to relive WR08.  As I have written here, I started running in February 2008 with the intention of getting into shape and losing a little weight.  Running organized races didn't hold much appeal to me, but I got on a training schedule for a 10K (the Fort Worth Zoo Run) to keep myself disciplined.  I ran it, enjoyed it, and was hooked.  I still didn't think I could run a marathon, but after running a couple longer races (a 1/2 marathon and a 25K) I figured I might as well try a marathon.

So I set out to run White Rock, aiming to finish in under 4 hours.  I trained pretty hard, sticking with my Runner's World Smart Coach training calculator.  One of the training techniques I read about was Yasso 800s, a way to run intervals that helps predict your time for a marathon finish.  I went to the expo to pick up my number a couple days before the marathon, and there was this guy at a booth promoting his new book.  The name on the cover was Bart Yasso, so I asked him, are you the Yasso 800s Yasso?  Of course he was, and is, and we had a very nice conversation.  I bought a book, which he signed, and which I have thoroughly enjoyed.  We have exchanged a few e-mails since, and I wish he were my personal running coach.

Saturday night I got my clothes and shoes ready, pinned my number on my shirt, and pinned some of my favorite Sport Beans to my shorts.  On Sunday morning, I got up in plenty of time to drive to the American Airlines Center.  Knowing that the train, which stops a couple miles from my house, has a stop at the AAC, I checked the schedule to see about riding it over that day.  They don't run on Sunday so I decided to drive.  I got near the ramp to the AAC almost an hour before the start time.  And I sat in my car, totally stopped on the freeway, for an hour.  I could see the AAC.  I could almost see the starting line.  But there was no way I could get there.  I found out later that the train runs on Sundays for special events like the marathon.  I could have kicked myself.

I finally got off the freeway and found a parking spot a few blocks away from the AAC.  I had a warm up run from my car to a skid-o-can near the start (no line if you use it after the race starts) and crossed the starting line about 20 minutes late.  Of course that flustered me, and I spent a good hour running past very slow runners, dodging around little groups of ladies walking four abreast, squeezing through crowds of walkers, trotters, and strollers.  Part of me knew I was going too fast, but it really felt good to be the fastest one around.

Finally I caught up to some runners running more my pace.  Unfortunately, I ran past them, too, to the group that was running faster than I could run for long.  I reached the halfway point in about 1:50, halfway to a 3:40 finish.  At that point I was thinking I could maybe even run a negative split in the second half, and finish at 3:30 or even--gasp!--3:20!  The naive fantasies of a first-time marathoner who went out way too fast.

About that time, I saw my friend Brian, who was out with his family cheering on his brother-in-law.  He ran along with me for a minute, encouraging me to keep up my good pace.  Then it hit me--literally.  The wind coming off White Rock lake hit me in the face like the proverbial wall.  I know it seems like I'm exaggerating, but even the elite runners said they probably lost 5 minutes or more to the wind.  I struggled for most of the second half against that wind.  I quickly knew I wouldn't be running a 3:40, much less a 3:20.  A few miles from the end, I wondered if I could even meet my goal of 4:00.  Many of those I had passed a while back started passing me.  I got into survival mode, still wanting a good finish, but not caring too much about time, as long as I finished.  I finally crossed the line at 4:03.  Not a bad first marathon, but probably not as good as it could have been had I not started out too fast.

My goal since then has been to run a 3:20 marathon, the time I need to qualify for the Boston Marathon as a 40 year old.  I will be running with a pace team, in which an experienced marathoner will set the pace for the team to finish at or just under 3:20.  He'll have balloons or something so I can easily follow him.  I am not sure I have trained well enough for that, but I'll give it my best shot.  3:20 will be my #1 goal.  My #2 goal will be to beat my time at Cowtown in February, 3:51.  My #3 goal, which should maybe be my #1 goal, is to finish without injury.

No matter what my time is, I know it will be fun to be out there, and, as always, I am thankful to have two good legs and a relatively healthy body so I can run for hours and still enjoy it.