Need for Speed, part 3

0, 08mi, aidsmarathon, speedwork

Start time: 08/14/05, 7:00am
Location: American University
Distance: 8 miles
Average pace: 9:30min/mile

Yay! More speedwork! This time was at our new location—the track at American University, my old roommate Marc’s law school alma mater. This was my first time actually getting to run speedwork on the track and I’ve got to say that for consistency’s sake you can’t beat it one bit.

I was supposed to be knocking out 9:30min/miles, and let’s put it this way: I don’t need to do the fancy little chart from last week because I was so on the money. I was hitting my times down to the quarter mile for the first five miles perfectly, and for the last three I actually came in a little fast thanks to running the initial eighth-mile about five seconds fast. (On the final one I also finished fast but I think it was due to excitement of being done.) But yeah, really consistent times for me: 9:33, 9:26, 9:31, 9:30, 9:31, 9:20, 9:21, 9:16.

Big props also go to those kind enough to wait; while I wasn’t the slowest person there, I was the slowest one that actually ran 8 miles so for the final mile it was just me on the track feeling a tiny bit silly. Maybe that also had something to do with deciding that I was drenched after five miles and ditching the shirt. (That breeze sure felt nice, though.) And having to dodge the randomly-activating sprinklers which weren’t positioned quite right, unless they really are supposed to wet the track a bit as well…

I’m really loving the speedwork program; I can’t believe I never did this before.

4 thoughts on “Need for Speed, part 3”

  1. Sounds like you had a wonderful time.

    Speedwork only makes you go faster! You are going to find that your other run will get much MUCH easier, especially when the cooler weather comes (if it ever does).

    You could EASY have a PR for your 5k at this point, I would think something around 26 minutes, if you didn’t have a lot of traffic.

    So you like the Tempo workouts, have you ever done Yassos (or 800 meter repeats)? You should get some intervals on that track too… Soon, you are going to have to fashion you a The Flash outfit for the marathon

      1. Here is the permalink for Yasso’s from RW. It’s actually named after Mr. Yasso, hence the gigglely name.

        In essence, how ever long it take you in minutes and second to run 800meter will be the time it takes you to run the marathon in hours and minutes. Hence if it take you 4 minutes and 13 seconds to run a Yasso, then your predicted marathon time is 4 hours and 13 minutes. It’s the easy math that makes it nice.

        So as a work out, you run would number of these at your desired pace along with a recovery jog of the number of minutes it took you to run one Yasso. So, visually:
        You want a 4:45 marathon, on your Tempo or Interval days you decide to do Yasso workout this week, and say you’re scheduled to do 5 miles. You would have something like
        1 mile warmup
        800 yasso in 4 minutes 45 seconds (9:30 pace)
        Recovery jog for 4 minutes 45 seconds (prob 10:30 pace ~0.45 miles)
        800 yasso in 4 minutes 45 seconds (9:30 pace)
        Recovery jog for 4 minutes 45 seconds (prob 10:30 pace ~0.45 miles)
        800 yasso in 4 minutes 45 seconds (9:30 pace)
        Recovery jog for 4 minutes 45 seconds (prob 10:30 pace ~0.45 miles)
        1.15 mile cooldown

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