Running Yasso 800s

In 100 degree heat, am I crazy?! Yeah, a little. The things we TNTers do to fight cancer.

To prepare running in the heat I made sure to drink plenty of water and electrolytes all day and the day before. I froze some gel ice packs in the freezer overnight and packed it away in a little ice chest along with a bottle of water and Gatorade for my track workout. I also made sure to eat some Luna Moons an hour before my workout to give me some energy.

You want to know how hot it was outside besides looking at my car's outside temperature? When I start sweating while standing in the shade! Not to mention how much I was sweating over a 12 minute mile warm-up, yuck! Next, Yasso's.

So what is a Yasso 800? Here is Bart Yasso, yes this is his real name and this workout is named after him, in his own words:

"I've been doing this particular workout for about 15 years, and it always seems to work for me. If I can get my 800s down to 2 minutes 50 seconds, I'm in 2:50 marathon shape. If I can get down to 2:40 (minuses), I can run a 2:40 marathon. I'm shooting for a 2:37 marathon right now, so I'm running my 800s in 2:37."

The same goes for someone training to run a marathon in three hours, four hours and five hours, and everything in between. Isn't that cool? The goal is to work up to run ten 800 meters. That's two full laps nonstop that equal half a mile. Today's goal was to run eight Yasso 800s in 4:00 minutes-in the 100 degree heat!

How did I do? Well, I had to stop twice in the middle of two Yasso's. Not only that but I skipped the second to the last run. Ugh, I was not feeling well. I was overheating, gulping down sweet Gatorade way too fast and started to get stomach cramps. The urge to vomit hit me several times, the reason why I stopped. During my recovery time I took my gel ice packs and placed them around my neck to help cool me down. Ah, the relief that came with it! I wish I had two more packs with me to put on my arms. And to share, too. I shared them with my fellow runners that had to stop to take a breather with me. As my Coach Meghan stated later at track, "You don't get gold stars for bad choices, you'll just screw up your training."

So how did I do with the full 800s I did run? My marathon goal of four hours-I ran them in four minutes! I'm so excited!!! (I still need to plug in my Garmin Forerunner to see the total results.) Now to build that up to ten Yasso's. But running Yasso's is only a supplementary training technique. Endurance, stamina, and long distance training are still required in order to run and complete a marathon.

Click here for tips to beat the heat while you run, as well as advice for running in the heat by RunnerDude's Blog.