Kenyan Way Speed Workout

I might set a record by running in the wee hours of the morning every day this week. This morning I did a 3 mile warmup, form drills and a couple of strides before I started the workout. Today's workout was a 5/4/3/2/1 ladder running hard followed by an equal time recovery jog. My warmup was fairly slow and I only got down to a little below 7:40 pace by the end of the warmup as I was still trying to get my body up and going. I only got out of bed about 30 minutes before I headed out the front door. After drills and a few strides I was definitely feeling a little quicker and ready to go. My goal was to run the first 5 minutes at 5:30 pace and then pick up the pace on each successive hard section. I didn't have a garmin, but I estimated my pace from the 1/4 mile markers along the path. I did the 5 minutes hard at 5:25 - 5:30 pace which was right on target. For the 4 minutes hard I was under 5:20 pace and covered just over 3/4 of a mile. It got pretty tough after that. For the 3 minutes hard I wanted to be running about 78 second quarters which would be 5:12 pace, but I was only doing about 5:16 - 5:18 pace. The 2 minutes hard had the hill on Memorial drive which slowed me down a little bit, but I was able to maintain about the same pace as the previous interval. Fortunately I had a nice kick left in the tank and ran the last minute at sub-4:40 pace. I passed a qtr mile marker on my slow jog with about 12 seconds left before I had to start the interval and I got past the next 1/4 mile marker just before the end of the 1:00. It was a hard workout, but I felt good and was pleased with the results. I did a 1.5 mile cooldown and finished with 8.75 miles for the day.