Yasso? Yes sir.

Yasso? Yes sir.

9 men chose to try a little thing called the Yasso 800 workout at this week’s Devil’s Turn.  It is a new format for DT which typically sticks to tempo type workouts, but since the Joe Davis 5k/10k and the Charleston Marathon is coming soon, drastic times call for drastic measures.

The workout is fairly simple.  Run ~1 mile warmup. Then proceeded into 800m intervals at a pace equivalent to our marathon goal time.  For instance, if your goal in a marathon is 3:30 then run the 800s in 3 min 30 sec or at a pace of 7:00 min/mile.  The rest period is the same amount of time.  The goal is to complete 10 intervals holding this pace constant which then proves you have appropriate fitness to meet your marathon goal.  That is the theory.  We didn’t quite manage 10 intervals due to time, but we can try again another time.

Observation 1: Running 800m on a track is easy to monitor (2 laps).  Trying to get a group of 9 guys to simultaneously start the next interval is impossible (everyone is starting the rest at different times and resting for different periods of time).  Luckily Ice9 quickly added that SIB usually runs 1/2 lap recovery when they do Yassos.  After trying this, YHC realized that SIB must be a bunch of bad arses because that is too short for official Yassos.  For future reference, 800m on and 400m off is about right for textbook Yassos.

Observation 2: 70 degrees in late December is ridiculous and had approximately 65% of the PAX shirtless.  In late December!

Observation 3: Horse Head noted that a shirtless Ice9 resembles a fast moving Conan O’brien in the moonlight.  #strangeobservation  Regardless, Ice9 was site FNG, WarDaddy, and Cotters on Thursday.  Despite just coming back from hernia surgery, he was in good form and pushing it hard out there.  Impressive.

Horse Head was actually just joining us again after a long hiatus which was related to building copious muscle at Meathead over the last weeks.  We are glad to see him again though.  Don’t be a stranger!

Ironsides was back out and putting in the miles again.  That man is dependable and becoming a stalwart of DT.  Excellent stuff there.  Stone Cold is also becoming quite regular and it is good to see him putting in the miles.  Great company out there.

JR Tolkien was again pushing it this week putting in solid work.  From the glimpses of the metrics he has in store for next year, we will all need to push as hard to keep up.  That guy is going places.  Speaking of, Fire Hazard is putting in some serious miles and was just as safe as Tuesday with the orange socks fully cleaned from Tuesday and gleeming in the early morning gloom.  #safetyfirst  He deserves a rest though after posting an 8th day in a row.  #ouch

Frasier and Mark (F3 name unknown) stayed out at the track and got in all 10 intervals.  Both are clearly beastly.  Mark is planning to run the Charleston marathon in January and based on the limited sightings around the track.  He is in proper form for it.  Best of luck!

It was a fun morning to be running with much to be thankful for this Christmas Eve.