Pace! Pace! Pace!

OK. I LOVED the Yasso 800s! Why is it that I always like the things I am supposed to hate?

Anyway, this is why I loved them...I have trouble keeping a steady pace. I think a lot of this is a mental, internal struggle I have with myself. You see, I keep thinking, well, I run a 10k at a 9 minute pace, why is my marathon pace so much SLOWER? I know this is stupid. And then that gets reinforced when the guy that I used to keep pace with in the Thanksgiving Day 10k program is still doing a 10 minute or so pace in the marathon group. I think I just finally realized that, well, I do an 11 minute marathon pace. That doesn't mean that I can't improve that, but that's where I need to start. Maybe now I can work on improvement instead of always trying to 'catch up' with myself. Anyway, I diverge...in the Yasso 800s you HAVE to keep the same pace constantly. My group actually only did 3. We did each 800 at 5 minutes with 90 seconds walking in between. Running on the track was nice because it seemed a lot cooler, it was that nice bouncy consistency instead of the uneven road, and it was on one level, which was great for my knee.

And of course, the coach for my group was AWESOME at keeping us on pace. On the last one we started to speed up because the B group was passing us in their lanes next to us and I think, you know, you just get caught up in the speed. I do it all the time in races. She kept yelling "PACE! PACE! PACE!" to remind us to keep on track. It actually worked.

I also found out after our 800s that the people I was pacing with were all running the Chicago Marathon! Hurrah! Now I know their names and can actually seek them out to run with in our group runs. This is the first marathon for all of them. It also is kind of cool that we are all training for the same marathon.

On the way back (we had a 2 mile run to the track and back from the track), I stayed with our coach, so that I could get used to running a consistent pace. It made SUCH a difference!

Tackling the Yasso 800s and liking them also makes me a little less worried about next week's Fartlek Session.