After my Saturday club track session, I was talking on Twitter about my least favourite distances. Not for racing (I’ve not yet done a race shorter than 5k, unless you count Junior parkrun!) but for training. We’d done the “Yasso 800s” at the club session. The idea behind this workout is that you can use it to predict your marathon time. If you average, say, 2m 50sec for your 10 x 800, you are in 2h 50m marathon shape. Average 3m 45sec, then 3h 45min marathon shape. You get the picture.
Actually, the maths is pretty much nothing more than a coincidence – clearly a good 800m runner would be able to average a really good clip for 10 of them, but might struggle to convert that to a decent 5k, let alone a marathon. And I somehow doubt David Rudisha – utterly amazing though he is – is going to be the first sub-two hour marathoner.
But it did remind me that 800m is officially (says me) the Most Evil Distance. Something about that second lap – ugh. You get the first 400 more or less for free, at 400m your legs start to go at 600m your lungs join them. Ow. I’d rather do mile reps. You do get mental blocks about certain distances, though – on Twitter @alliesolskjaer was telling me that 2km is the worst – because four laps of the track is fine, but five is a killer.
Of course all this presupposes that you actually get to train on a track. Do you have access to one? I have one about half a mile from my house, which would be fantastic if it was actually open in the week. The facilities at Battersea are brilliant, though, and I always enjoy a session at Barnes track, where you are quite likely to booed by an unappreciative audience of geese. Living in London at least means all these are fairly easily accessible. But I can’t say the so-called Olympic legacy has had much of an impact, that I can see. When was the last time a new running track was built, other than that one above? If you do have one near, and have never tried it out, I urge you to. If only to make sure that it’s used, and hence stays open and accessible to all.
Source: Read Full Article