Yasso 800s

We did a "Yasso 800s" workout tonight - 8x800m with a 400m rest in between, which I did pretty close to the same time as the repeat, at goal marathon time. Goal marathon time means that you run in minutes and seconds your goal in hours and minutes (a 3 hour marathoner runs them in 3 minutes, a 2:30 marathoner runs them in 2 minutes, 30 seconds as so on). Since I have never run a marathon and am not really training for one I kind of pulled a goal out of the air. I shot for 2:20-2:25, hopefully starting out at the high end and working my way down by the end. I hit the window but slowed down throughout the workout. Oh well. It was ideal weather for running as it was about 50 degrees with almost no wind. My times and rests:

800s Rest
2:21 2:22
2:23 2:23
2:21 2:34
2:23 2:36
2:23 2:38
2:23 2:31
2:24 2:35
2:21

I had a hard time recovering, as you can see from the rest interval getting longer and the times creeping up as the workout progressed, and just felt like I could not get air into my lungs or expand my diaphragm. I have felt like this since my little incident, so I am hoping that by next week it should pass and things will get back to normal.

My expectations for this workout are based on my past experiences with it. In college (I know, it was 15 years and 10 pounds ago) we used to do this workout near the end of the season with 200m rest (rest was about half the repeat time) in about 2:20 and it felt very easy. Just before setting my 5000m PR 10 years ago I did several similar workouts of 10x800m with 400m rest but I was hitting 2:12-2:15 with the same perceived effort as tonight. This just tells me I am a long way from touching any of my PRs right now.