21 Day Countdown: 19 Days Remaining

19 Day Update: (Follow-up to my Blog "21 Days" chronicling the 21 days winding down to my next race; the Portland Marathon on October 10, 2010.

Sunday was supposed to be
a light cross training day, but I took a rare day off. I was still recuperating from last Thursday's tough tempo run and knew that I had one more tough run to get through; Tuesday's track work. The training plan called for ten (yes, count them ten) Yasso 800's.* My option was to do track work with a group on Wednesday or go it alone on Tuesday. Wanting to "get it over with" and have a recovery day Wednesday before another tempo on Thursday, I did the "o dark thirty" track work this morning. You know it's early when the other runner on the track has his headlamp on.

Last night's "night before track work" meal was a combination of carbs and proteins with rosemary chicken, red potatoes and salad (with my wife's signature rice vinegar and olive oil dressing topped with roasted pine nuts)--YUM! That was the good part, the bad part (seemed like a good idea at the time) was opening the Wente Chardonnay. I can handle a couple beers the night before a training run (they're carbs after all aren't they?) but wine is not a runner's friend the morning after.

My stomach was off (and has been too much this training period) before the Yasso's and without the greatest night of sleep--this was a
tough one to muscle through. I managed a 3:08 average over the ten 800's (see detail on my DailyMile.) The picture at the left is after the eight miles of track work at our local high school with the Colorado sunrise coming up.

From what I understand Yassos are an indicator of what your marathon finish time should be although I think the half marathon formula is a bit more realistic. (See the Runner's World article on this topic.) Your 800 times simply translate to your marathon times in hours minutes. In my case this would mean I'm due to run a 3:08 marathon...yeah...right, and I'm "The most interesting man in the world!"

The prescription for the next 18 days is to get plenty of rest and avoid Mr. Wente.

*For those non-runners or beginners, an 800 is 800 meters or two full laps around a conventional track which is roughly 1/2 mile. For a 3:08 800, my mile pace would be 6:16.

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