Down Ladder Workout - Tuesday

Ladder Workout - Interval workout with a systematic progression.  This is more easily understand with examples.  Any distances can be used such as 400, 600, 800, 1000, 800, 600, 400.  You would run the 400's at mile pace, the 600's slightly slower, the 800's at 5k pace, and the 1000 at 10k pace or slightly faster.  I used to run a lot of these in high school on the track team.  We would specifically call these Up and Down Ladders.  We broke our ladder defitions down to also include an Up Ladder workout and a Down Ladder workout.  The Up Ladder workout would be short distances at faster speeds increasing in distance and slowing in speed as the workout progresses.  An example would be something like 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200.  My group's workout on Tuesday was a Down Ladder.  This is the opposite of the Up Ladder.  You start at longer distances and increase speed with shorter distances as the workout progresses.

Since I didn't run this weekend, I decided to start warming up early.  I jogged 1.5 miles before the group warmup.  I jogged another mile and then the usual 4 x 100 striders to loosen up.

Here was our Down Ladder workout.

2 x 1000 (@ 10k goal pace)
4 x 800 (@ 5k goal pace)
4 x 400 (@ 1 mile goal pace)

between each repetition, 200 jog recovery
between each set, 3 minute rest

I ran the first set of 1000's a little fast.  I don't remember my splits though.  I know I was about 10 seconds faster than my goal and the second was 1 second faster or slower than the first rep.

The 800's were much faster than my goal pace.  I think my goal was 3:45 before we started.  The first was 3:15 and I could tell that was too fast.  I hit the rest in 3:21, 3:24, and 3:20.  I posted the times on DailyMile.com and the first one was wrong.  I remembered now that I ran that first one just behind Jonny and he did a 3:14.  That's a virtual 2 mile time of 13:20.

The 400's were brutal as they should be.  They are fast and I was supposed to start jogging immediately after finishing each one, but I had to stop for a few seconds after each one to catch my breath.  I was obviously overachieving.  I ran them in 1:21, 1:26, 1:21, 1:35.  I started cramping and couldn't control my breathing on the last one, but it was only a 400, so I pushed through it.  I don't think I could have kept going if it was an 800 or more.  Then again, I wouldn't have run that fast if it was an 800.  That's a virtual mile time of 5:43.  I can't believe that I used to run those pretty easily in high school.  I ran a 6:07 at the time trial a couple months ago.  I would think that I would be getting close to 5:43 without rest or recoveries, but I guess that I am not taking into account that this was at the end of the workout.  At least, that's what I am hoping is the case.

My times are coming down along with the temperatures.  This was a great workout!