Alex Yee completes Yasso 800s with average 2:14

This makes no sense to me.

I'd have been very happy to run 2:45 for a marathon, but running the Yasso session at that pace would have been a joke. It would have been slower than my best 10 miles pace for half the distance (10 x 800m = 8k, which is almost 5 miles).

If I did them at 5k pace, they would have been 2:28, which I could have done OK, but I'd have been life and death to run a half-marathon at the indicated 2:28 marathon pace.

True. Most high schoolers don’t run the mileage to comfortably finish a Marathon in a pace consistent with their 5k ability.

He’s still nearly 2 months out from race day so it’s an indication of what he can run now not then. I would expect by race day he will have peaked and be ready to run sub 2:10.

The Murph is not from CrossFit. A simple internet search leads to Lieutenant Michael Murphy.

So he did 10x800 in 2:14 with 60s rest and then 10x300. Great workout. Predicts nothing about the marathon. The article says he's targeting 2:07 - 2:10 which is in line with prior performances. At Yee's level, even for a marathon debut, the coach and athlete are highly in tune with fitness level. I can't believe a low-volume track workout will tell them much about marathon fitness. But a workout can be a good workout without being a good predictor. Either way, for me, I don't get the benefit of this workout for the marathon.

He's an arrogant little upstart and will get beaten by over 12 minutes.

Yee sucks, just like Marc Scott. They will never do anything at marathon distance.

I don't even need to Google this. Sure, fine, Micheal Murphy invented the workout. He called it "Armor" or something if I recall correctly. He got into Crossfit and did Crossfit-inspired workouts while stationed in Afghanistan, right?

If Crossfit didn't exist, almost no one would know about this workout. They named it "The Murph" after him, but the workout's fame as we know it is dependent on Crossfit becoming the silly phenomenon it was.

I would def buy Boing Boing shoes.

Pretty clear Yee just hit a speed session, in an otherwise marathon specific build. 10x8 + some 300s. He's turning over the legs. He could obviously average something faster for the session. Does that mean anything for his marathon time? Would argue someone with his aerobic base would do something like this slower than what they marathon at. Would argue that this workout isn't a predictor workout at all & that it might work out ok for amateurs over elite athletes. Would also argue that people can try to turn a short interval session like this into reality & that, if that works, it's correlation/not causation. Yee knocked out some 800s. He will be targeting something under 2:10.

Yasso 800s say the slowest of the 10x800 is the predictor of the marathon time; not the average of the 10.. It has always been pretty close for me.

:)

So if I do 2:50 + 9x2:20 I'm in 2:50 shape?

I'm sorry, but every "predictor" statement on this session vs The Marathon contains gaping holes.

I could once do this session av 2:20. I was never going to do a 2:20 Marathon.

(Could Kipchoge do this av 2:00 a few years ago?)

I ran 8x800 when I was 20 in 2:12 average. Hard but not all out (2:00 rest). Let’s say I’d run 10x 800 in 2:13 off same rest accounting for extra distance. I sure as hell couldn’t run a 2:13 marathon - my threshold was 5:00…

The flip side is that Yasso 800s as originally described are too fast at elite extremes. They're to be done with 1-minute rests. So Kelvin Kiptum could have done 10 x 800 in 2:00.5 with a minute rest before he ran 2:00:35?

I think you'd agree that if you could run 10 miles at or faster than 5:30 pace and 5k at sub 5:00 pace, a 2:45 marathon would be significant underperformance.

That's exactly my point.

They aren't really a marathon predictor.

Same thing if you run the workout right.