Speed Workout – Ladders

I woke up early and did another speed workout at the track this morning. Instead of doing the usual mile repeats, I decided to try something new. The person who introduced me to speed workouts mentioned a type of interval training called ladders.

Ladder intervals are similar to mile repeats but, instead of running mile intervals, the distance of each interval changes. It can be either progressive or regressive or both. For example : 400m, 800m, 1200m, 1600m with 400m slow intervals in between. The distances can be anything you want. You could even do .5 mile, 1 mile, 1.5 mile, 2 mile, 1.5 mile, 1 mile, .5 mile with slow half miles in between.

What I had planned on doing this morning was a 400m, 800m, 1200m, 1600m, 1200m, 800m, 400m ladder with 400m slow runs in between. Unfortunately, I forgot that a lap is 400m… not 800m. Dang! That’s what I get for trying to plan things out at 5:20am. What I actually ran was 200m, 400m, 600m, 800m, 600m, 400m, 200m with 200m slow runs in between. After completing the first ladder, my RunKeeper indicated that I had gone half the distance that I had planned. Oh well, I just started over and re-ran the same ladder a second time. It’s all good.

One thing that I noticed about the varying interval distances was the my pace was much faster pace on the shorter ones. When I wasn’t as concerned about getting exhausted and not finishing, I would run at an all-out pace.

Not sure if ladders are more or less effective than mile repeats but it was nice to mix things up a little.