VIDEO: Rejean Chiasson nails final big workout before the Boston Marathon
Watch Rejean Chiasson's final big workout ahead of the most famous road race in the world, the Boston Marathon.
The Boston Marathon is on April 17 and Toronto’s Rejean Chiasson wrapped up his final race-specific workout for the famed road race on March 29. Canadian Running joined the 2012 Canadian marathon champion for the workout, which was done in High Park west of downtown Toronto.
Once one of Canada’s top marathoners, Chiasson has not “raced” the distance in five years. (He paced a friend in a marathon and got a Boston qualifying time.) Now, with multiple 200-plus kilometre weeks under his belt, Chiasson has all eyes on the point-to-point race which begins in Hopkinton, Mass. and finishes on Boylston Street in downtown Boston.
For the workout, Chiasson ran a mixture of longer and shorter intervals totalling almost 18K of speed work. Including warmup and cool down, the soon-to-be-father covered approximately 27K that day. Chiasson has a 2:17:47 lifetime best in the marathon, which he set in his debut, and occasionally throws in a 42K here and there in training. (He talks about why in the video.)
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“It ended up possibly being my strongest session of the cycle,” he said via Instagram. “Not only because of my pace being way faster than a similar workout done six weeks ago, but mainly because of how the pace felt and having to hold back so coach Eddie [Raposo] doesn’t get mad at me for getting carried away.”
Though a coach himself with Pace and Mind and Adidas Runners Toronto, Chiasson gets guidance from Eddie Raposo.
The workout
4.8K: 15:30 (average per kilometre pace: 3:13)
5.4K: 17:31 (average per kilometre pace: 3:15)
4x1K: 3:07, 3:02, 3:06, 3:02
3.64K: 11:50 (average per kilometre pace: 3:15)
Chiasson took three minutes recovery between each of the four sets and 90 seconds recovery between each of the four 1Ks. The longer intervals were done at marathon pace while the 1K repeats were run at 10K/half-marathon effort, according to Chiasson’s Strava. Kate Van Buskirk, the 2014 Commonwealth Games 1,500m bronze medallist and also a coach with Pace and Mind, joined Chiasson for part of the filmed workout.