Anxious, perhaps..........

Heart rate and elevation profile from this mornings speed workout, above. This workout has become easier since we first started. We break it up into the A group with the fast guys and the B group, me and S. Stayed with the A guys for a couple steps this morning until S. told me to slow down. Almost felt to easy, but by the middle of the workout it becomes work. Especially when the wind is so strong running downhill feels like an uphill. On paper this seems like a simple workout, 20 x 1 minute hard with 1 minute recovery. Pace works out to be quicker than 5k pace, but not all out. The tricky part the first couple of times is getting the pace that can be sustained for a minute, 20 times. Great workout.

I would say this has to be the most anxious I've been this far out from the race in any training cycle. Most be the unknown. All of the training has been stepped up a notch, as well as the anticipated finish time. Really felt it the morning of the Yasso 800 workout. The only way I was able to finish the 10 reps at the desired pace was with S. pulling me. The laps where he didn't pull I would relax 3-4 seconds per lap. Same thing on this mornings workout. Sure is a tremendous help to have someone pulling or pushing the pace.

Yasso 800 article in runners world, discussion of this workout, old thread form cool running, thread from 1999.

Bottom line, everyone has to run what works for them. I've decided the Yasso 800's are a great workout once or twice in the latter stages of the training cycle as a indicator of my training to that point. I don't think I'll ever go back to building up to 10 x 800's by increasing a few a week. The other speed stuff we've been doing this cycle has worked better than the 800 meter repeats.