I'm still really working at it too. I've been having Fast, slow, fast for my mile breakdowns. And Slow, Fast, Slow for others off and on as I try to get better at slow, fast, faster.
Thanks so much for chiming in! I also typically feel WONDERFUL out the gate, but clearly have a big fade, so this is definitely helpful.
I did get my run in on Tuesday. It was somewhat uneventful and I went faster than my plan dictated, but this is a new pacing scheme, so I need to do some adjusting. What I really want to talk about are the ladder workouts, partly because
@sourire asked about them, and partly because maybe this will be informative to someone else who stumbles upon this when they're starting out.
So
@MoanasPapa did his ladder workout on Wednesday afternoon. When he had finished, we had the following conversation by text (which I am sharing with his permission):
Him: Well ladders are terrible
Him: Just has bad as I'd remembered from swimming
Him: I had 200, 400, 600, 800, 800, 400, 200
Me: Mine are tomorrow
Him: When I was doing the 600, I was like, ugh I'm only on #3 of 7!
Him: And the two 800s remain!
Him: BUT try not to think that way, try to take it one at a time
Him: and DO NOT overrun the 200....that is a huge mistake
Him: I'm actually feeling a bit tight in my left shin/ankle
Him: because I ran too fast on the 200 and 400
Me: I'm thinking of it as less mileage and a slower pace than my 5k
Him: But then I got to the 800s, which I knew were going to be tough, and I tried to hit my time or slightly slower, and I just chugged through them, and then by the time I got to the 400 and 200 those felt super easy
Him: But yea, 200 400 600 ** 800 800 400 200, right where the asterisks are are where I felt bad
Me: Man, good for you for powering through
Him: Thanks! But I just wanted to tell you so you can strategize and set expectations....also that it happens to everyone!
Him: It's a good idea to think of it like the 5k. Slower than the 5k, and break it up into mental chunks
Him: Try to focus on the current or next distance rather than the whole ladder
I found his advice to be really helpful, though I definitely was a little intimidated between that and
@DopeyBadger's note of caution above.
So I set out this morning and did just that - remembered that I'd recently run farther and faster than today's workout was going to require, and then focused on each individual piece. How'd I do? How'd it feel?
Everything was fine. Here are my splits:
1: 1.5 mi warm up, 20:22 (13:30/mi)
2: 200m CV, 1:10 (9:05/mi)
3: (walking RI)
4: 400m CV, 2:31 (9:08/mi)
5: (walking RI)
6: 600m CV, 3:53 (9:27/mi)
7: (walking RI)
8: 800m CV, 5:09 (9:19/mi)
9: (walking RI)
10: 400m CV: 2:26 (9:19/mi)
11: (walking RI)
12: 200m CV: 1:20 (9:50/mi)
13: (walking RI)
14: 1.08 mi cool down, 13:35 (12:37/mi) (
@DopeyBadger I know this was faster than my CD pace - I was running late and it was mostly downhill - sorry!)
Thoughts: Overran the paces for the CV (my CV pace is supposed to be 10:22/mi). Each time, would tell myself I could and should go slower. I never felt like I was going
too hard or even necessarily beyond a "comfortable" hard pace. It felt close to the same as the 5k effort on Saturday (today felt easier), which I think is the point. So why the speed increase? Probably two things: better weather, flatter ground (I do my CVs on a HS track). I also think that I would have felt the effort more acutely if I had slow-jogged my RIs instead of walking them. I'll have to test that last theory during my
next training cycle - these were my last CVs! Tempo runs for my hard runs from here on out.
