This is Bart Yasso.

As well as being a running legend (apparently) and looking rather cool (definitely) he created a workout that, many claim, predicts your marathon time. 

The idea being that if you want to run a 4.00 marathon, do 10 x 800m in 4.00 with an jogging recovery of 4.00. Want to run a 3.30 marathon? Complete 10 x 800m in 3.30 with a 3.30 active recovery.

Bart recommends incorporating these Yasso 800s (that’s what the training is called) into your regular marathon training. He also suggests starting with 4 x 800m and working your way up to 10.

Tonight’s session was a bit of Yasso training. Before Christmas I was up to 6 x 800m, but after a couple of weeks of very little speed work, I dropped tonight’s Yassos down to 5 x 800m – don’t forget I’m also running every day – don’t want to go crazy. Ended up doing 4.3 miles in all – the Yassos session is a hard session – not looking forward to doing 10 of ’em. 

Total Janathon mileage = 34.8

Monday is a rest day.

It’s Janathon, there is no rest in January. At all. 

Tonight’s run was a very gentle and very simple 2 miles. It involved walking the dog to a point just on the outskirts of town. Running 1 mile, turning round and running back. The map of the route looked like this.

As you can see it wasn’t the most amazing of routes, although it did have a slight bend in it, not that you could see anything considering if was pitch black.

Job done.

Total Janathon mileage = 30.5

Sunday. 

Decisions. Decisions. Decisions.

Have a lay in and go for a run this afternoon? Get up early and get the run done? Forget all about this ridiculous Janathon idea and have a day off?

After much deliberation, it was decided that a ‘get out by 9am’ would, and should, be the way to go. That left enough time for a coffee and a spot of reading.

I’m currently reading ‘Nod’, a really great book, ironically about a world were very few people can actually manage to sleep, unlike this morning where I could have slept until lunchtime. 

That left one more decision to make. This is the dog…

He is old. He loves going for runs at the woods. The only problem is that in the evenings after a run he hobbles around and can barely walk. After a little chat with him, to explain to him to take it steady, we decided he could join us. We were only planning on a gentle run.

Bourne Woods. 6 miles. Cushty.

Total Janathon mileage = 28.5

Well that’s a week gone already. Seven days. I’m happy to report that I’ve managed to get out for a run every day. 

Today is Saturday, so it was the regular trip to Rutland Water for the morning’s parkrun. It was a lovely mild morning, slight mist hanging over the reservoir, but a short-sleeve running morning all the same. 

I love parkrun, I think it’s a great idea: free weekly timed 5k. All you need to do is register online, print off your barcode, bring it along and run. Easy as that.

It’s always nice to have a blast at a 5k every week. This morning my legs found it all a bit of a struggle,started off at a good pace but just couldn’t maintain it. So the last 1k was hard work. I also had the added pressure of trying to hold off a young lad of about 12 in the last 250m. Thankfully I managed to trip him up and leave him crying in the gutter! 

My reward for getting up and out on a Saturday morning? Wetherspoons breakfast. Lovely jubbly.

Total Janathon mileage = 22.3

After running for the last 5 days, plus a parkrun tomorrow morning, I felt as though the legs needed a more relaxing evening.

So it was the gym (yep I know, gym again) for a very gentle half hour on the treadmill. Followed by the obligatory Friday night takeaway. 

Total Janathon mileage = 19.2 

Five days into Janathon and it’s already starting to get very predictable. It’s too cold to go out for a run, so it was off to the gym again for some treadmill action. 

My gym is a pretty crappy place, it doesn’t have a pool or steam room, it’s not one of these swish leisure centres, in fact it doesn’t even have a lot of exercise machines, just massively muscular fellas tensing and strutting about.*

But what it does have, and the highlight of every visit, is a motivation sign…

It’s a simple message: effort is a choice. I think that same mantra works for the blogging as well. As much as the exercise is an effort, the blogging is always a bigger effort. I’m five days in and struggling to write anything interesting. 

So I haven’t.

Total Janathon mileage = 16.7

Run streak = 5 days

* Hopefully they don’t read this blog or they will crush me when I next pop in.