Yasso 800's

A tough speed work-out tonight at Track. Yasso 800's. Bart Yasso is a legendary marathoner, and he insists that if one can run 800m (two laps of the track) 10-12x with a short break in between each 800m, in a consistent time (e.g. 3m:50s) then its a good indicator of one's ability to finish a marathon in the same time only in hours and minutes (i.e. 3h:50m). Most people after thinking about this decide Yasso is crazy. Why should the minutes to hours and seconds to minutes translation just happen to work-out between 800m and 26mi? On the other hand, so people say, it does seem to correlate well.

We completed 8 reps of 800m tonight. It was tough but I concentrated on completing each 800 in the same consistent time. Mission accomplished. Its remarkable how each first lap was very consistently 1:50-1:55, and each 800m (two laps) was 3:45-3:55.

I don't believe for a minute that I could complete a marathon today in 3h:55m, but it was a satisfying work-out!