Yassos Interruptus

I decided to stop whining about not having a clue as to what kind of shape I'm in and do something about it; time to break out the old "Yasso 800s" workout. First, though, I had to find a track - and that took all day. I ended up at the White Bear Lake north campus track, which is crushed brick and was muddy and covered in debris and is old enough to be 880 yards, not 800 meters.

The first 800 was slow, as I didn't do a warm-up - 3:07. Then I managed 3:02, 3:03, 3:04, 3:04, 3:05, 3:06, 3:07, 3:08 and was headed into the last one, when a couple of yahoos decided to race go-carts in the parking lot, filling the air with a blue cloud of exhaust and worrying me that their spinning 360's next to my car was just asking for trouble. So I dropped out of the last one just as one of the carts broke a chain - fortunately causing him to skid uncontrollably in the direction opposite the car.

I'd been feeling down lately, but at least I'm not a guy racing go-carts in a high school parking lot!

The workout suggests I could do a marathon in 3:05 and I think that puts me in 4:55 shape for the Superior 50K, or about 30 seconds per mile slower than Id like - about what I'd been guessing.

[Math alert]
The way I come up with 4:55 is to assume that every 700 feet of climb is like running an additional mile, making the 50K essentially 38.5 miles. Then I plug the numbers into my favorite equation for ultra distances: 1.213xlog(miles)-log (minutes)=constant. Using 26.2 miles and 185 minutes gives the constant, then plugging in 38.5 miles gives 295 minutes, or 4:55.

This would be so much easier if only everyone who ran that 50K would run a road marathon as well, so I could do a direct comparison!