Repeat!

No porn again this week – I promise to do better next week.

You know how some retail estabishments have a name and/or photo of people posted by the cash register with the exhortion “don’t let this person write checks”? Do you think that if I asked the coffee shops I occasionally frequent to put my photo & name by their cash registers with the instructions “don’t let this woman order anything larger than a medium” that they would?

This morning, I stopped at Seattle’s Best (the one in Borders downtown, right where I exit MAX to make my bus transfer) & stopped for a coffee & bagel (I also wanted fruit, but the closest thing they had was a lemon donut, and although I was tempted, I decided that might not cut it for my daily fruit intake). I order, as I often do when I go for a latte, a LARGE fat-free (sometimes I get soy) vanilla latte.

I think that’s about 17 shots of espresso. It’s been over 4 hours, and I think I can still feel my heart beating in an uncomfortable way. I chugged the whole thing on my 20 minute bus ride, and by the time I got to my office, I felt all hyper & shifty, like I assume I would feel if I started doing lines in the morning. In fact, I got all nervous & paranoid that someone would ACTUALLY accuse me of being on drugs. Seriously. Massive amounts of caffeine apparently make me into a paranoid drug fiend.

Anyways…..BYGONES. (Am still hyper. Not sure why. Am typing 5,000 words per minute right now. Am too scattered to actually be a good worker, though. JUST SAY NO, people. Just say no.)

Last night I did a track workout with the Ambitious One. I talked her into Yasso 800s.  Basically the premise is that if you are training for a marathon & have a specific time goal (i.e. a 4 hour 45 minute finish) you should do 800 repeats with the same goal time (i.e. 4 minutes, 45 seconds) with the equivalent time for a recovery jog between repeats. You start at 4 repeats & top out at 10 repeats at least 10 days before your marathon.

My first 800 came in at 4:04. Which was a wee bit on the fast side. 800 #2 – 4:14; #3 – 4:29; #4 – 4:16. Except for the 1st recovery (which I walked), I jogged the rest. I’m a little sore today, but I know that’s because I didn’t ice & foam roll last night. I meant to, but the ice pack was still on the floor from Saturday & wasn’t cold, and the foam roller was surly & didn’t want to hang out.

My recovery jogs were all about 12 minute miles – which I feel is okay – I was really working hard to keep them slow.

I think next time I’ll aim for the 800s (five of them!) between 4:15-4:20, which was a very comfortable yet speedy pace. I’ve not done a lot of speed work, so I’m not sure how all-out I’m supposed to be doing these. I couldn’t have had a conversation during the 800s, but I recovered quickly and was ready to go again at the end of my recovery jog. I think that if I can’t jog the entire recovery that would mean I was going too hard. Based on my 5K time, the Runner’s World calculator says I should be able to do a marathon in 4:31, and that I should do my 800s at 4:25, but that just didn’t feel challenging. We’ll see if it gets more challenging as I add in more repeats.

Does anyone else do these? If not, do you do interval training? What kind? Share!

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