MQ4BQ - Launched?

Matt's Quest for Boston Qualification
I have all but committed to training for a Boston Qualification time at a fall marathon. I picked up the Run Less, Run Faster book and have been looking at it. I'm not yet completely sold on the concept of running only three days a week. However, the book does have a chapter with specific BQ training plans for each age group and gender. This is basically their normal marathon program with the paces calculated out for you based on your BQ time.

Training to Start the Training
Just before each program is a prequalification list of workouts they recommend you be able to do before starting the program. For me, these looked like an interesting running fitness test. It says that if you can do each of these three workouts within one week, you should be ready to start the training. There were distance options within each workout, but one set looks like the following:
Workout 1 - 6 x 800m @ 2:58 mins each; 400m recovery jog
Workout 2 - 1 mile warmup; 5 miles in 35 minutes
Workout 3 - 15 miles @ 7:50/mile average.
Building up to these may just become my training goal before starting the actual program.

Workout 1 - Ouch
This morning I attempted Workout 1. I programmed my Garmin to beep at the half mile (800m) repeats and to stay at a pace between 5:50 and 6:10. It would also beep at me if I was too fast or too slow (different beep tones for each along with an on-screen note: "Speed Up!"). And it would do a beeping countdown when I approached the end of each repeat and each recovery. Although I was able to run at that pace, it was difficult to hold it steady and to hold it for that distance. I did pretty well on the first three, keeping it around 6:00. But the last three seemed to hover closer to 6:20 - 6:30. The recovery jogs were around the 8 minute mark. Hopefully these will get a bit easier and I'll see some improvement over the next few weeks.

Moving On...
I hope to give Workout 2 a try later this week, but I will need to build up my mileage a bit more before attempting the 15 miler for Workout 3. Maybe a ten miler this weekend will be on the agenda.