14week Marathon Training Plan: Week 6, Session 2: Yasso 800m

Seventeenth Session: Week 6 Session 2: Yasso 800m x 7
Goal: First Marathon (Sundown Singapore 25 March 2017)

I celebrated my son's first birthday over the weekend, at Punggol SAFRA indoor water park. Time really does fly, as just days before his birthday he started to take his first unassisted steps. And he's building his confidence everyday, as he's almost making it all the way across the living room without falling over. Very soon he'll be playing catch with his older sister, and then running the Yasso 800m with his Dad :)

Main Set: 800m in 3:00mins with active recovery for 400m in 3:00mins  x 7
After a few days of heavy rain, the track was a little soggy, and that visibly reduced the numbers of runners at the track. A less congested track is great for us, and my Garmin recorded 25degrees for this session, so it was a nice cool change for those that made it out. We had a good team turnout on track today, and there were no dramas finishing the required 7 x 800m. The only difference to the plan was that the recovery laps were actually run faster than 3:00mins, averaging around 2:45mins for the 400m. No complaints or issues from the group on this. The rotation of runners to lead each 800m is definitely a great formula to make the session feel shorter and more enjoyable. Definitely no competition or faster paced 800m this session, and I think that was due to the fact we knew the long easy run followed by MP kick session will happen tomorrow (moved from Thursday due to scheduling conflicts).

During the 7 x 800m set:

Average Heart Rate: 146 bpm (includes recovery)

Max Heart Rate: 170 bpm
Recovery Heart Rate (1min after finishing 800m): 1: 123bpm, 2: 130bpm, 3: 129bpm,  4: 137bpm, 5: 140bpm, 6: 137bpm, 7: 132bpm
Cadence: 184

Session Analysis / Review: (17 / 42 sessions completed): 40%

Heart rate data (and HR zones) are virtually identical to last week's session, but the important take away is that each week this session increases by 1.2kms, so factoring cardiac drift (heart rate steadily increases the longer you exercise), this is good news as the average HR is still staying the same, rather than increasing. The other noticeable difference is average cadence for the session at 184, compared to 177 and 175 for the last two weeks prior. This is the same trend across other sessions (MP run and long run with MP kick), so happy to report that cadence is increasing consistently across all sessions, translating to better running efficiency, especially taking into consideration the HR data.