Yasso 800's and Lululemon Style Crossfit

The rainfall warning (30 to 50mm expected) that was issued for the Fraser Valley yesterday didn't stop the Lions Gate Road Runners from embarking on a slopping wet track workout last night. It was a much smaller group then normal not because of the weather but because many people are running the Haney to Harrison race this Saturday. Chris was unable to run due to injury but bravely volunteered to come run/time our workout. He suggested the Yasso 800 which is an amazing marathon training workout and based on how far out I am from my 50km it would be a great time to do it. In principle it’s a simple marathon workout you run ten 800s (two laps of the track) in the same time as your marathon goal time and you get one lap of “recovery 60% effort” in between each 800 set. The basic premise behind the workout is: if you run your 800s at 2 minutes 50 seconds, your marathon time would be 2 hours 50 minutes or if you ran your 800s at 2 minutes 40 seconds, you’d run a 2:40 marathon.


I don’t currently have a road marathon planned for the near future but as a benchmark for my training I use the following logic. If I were to run a road marathon I’d want to make sure I ran it fast enough to qualify for the Boston Marathon so I would need to run a sub 3:40. So I would want to run my 800s at 3 minutes 40 seconds or faster.

Another thing to keep in mind when doing this workout is not to go out too hard from the beginning – similar to how you would actually run a marathon. Here are my times from last night’s training session:

3:35:0
3:35:5
3:34:2
3:29:5
3:28:0
3:27:1
3:24:8
3:22:5
3:22:9
3:23:9
Average time: 3:27:58

Roger/Chris my fearless Thursday night leaders summed it up best when they said “That was a key workout to complete. Especially since the opposition were sleeping on this wet evening.”

It’s workouts like that one in the pouring rain that not only help physical training but more importantly build your emotional and mental strength to ensure you get through the tight times during races.

Following the track I picked up my good friend Jules and we headed to Lululemon on West 4th to attend their first Crosffit Training session. Crossfit classes are occurring there every Thursday evening from 7-8pm free of charge. There is a maximum of 20 people allowed in the class and you have to sign up in store prior to the class. The Crossfit Classes are being taught by Mark Turner who is a certified CrossFit Coach, Personal Trainer and Agtsu Kettlebell Insturctor at Fitness World in Kitsilano. There were probably 25 people who attended last night which is a great turn out for the first night. Our workout consisted of 20 minutes of the following exercises - going as hard as you can for the 20 minutes:

10 Burgees – including a real pushup and high knee jump
15 power super deep weighted squats
½ km sprint outside the store on a slight incline and back

We plan on attending next week too!