Yasso 800's Ironman Style- A Great Race Predictor

Almost everyone is familiar with Bart Yasso's 800 workout. It's a simple concept. Intersperse one day per week during your peak weeks before a marathon  interval training with your weekly run schedule.

Want to run a 3:00 marathon? Then run ten 800s at 3 minutes/800meter. Between the 800s, jog for same duration it took you to run your repeats. If you're able to maintain a steady pace for all ten repeats, then you're likely going to hit your marathon mark. Fizzle out after five? Time to re-think marathon goals(I should have done that at the Adirondack Marathon).

Yasso 800's have been shown to be pretty effective in predicting marathon run time(within 5 minutes). That's why I've devised the Ferreira 2x800's for predicting Ironman Bike-Run times.

Want to finish a six hour bike followed by a 3 1/2 hour marathon? Then bike 2 miles in 6 minutes, transition quickly and run a 3:30 800m. Repeat that 10 times and you've got it.

So after this workout you will have:
 -Biked 20 miles at 20mph which is about 1.4mph faster than you'll have to do during the Ironman.
 -Run 5 miles at 7min/mile which is about 1 minute/mile faster than during the Ironman.
 -Run all those miles transitioning from the bike.

Unlike the Yasso 800's, the Ferreira 2x800's have no rest except the transition from the bike to the run. This entire workout should take less than two hours but will certainly give you a good idea of where your Ironman fitness is.

I will be using this workout as a key workout for my prep for Mont Tremblant.

Skeptics: try it out and let me know what you think.



Up Next: Pocono Mountain 70.3 October 2nd for Amber and Danny