Warmup
- 10 minutes easy
- Dynamic drills: leg swings, A-skips, high knees, butt kicks
- 4 x 100m strides building through 5K effort
- 2 minutes rest before rep 1
Main Set
5 x 1000m, descending. 2 minutes jog recovery between reps.
Each rep is faster than the last. Aim for 5–10 seconds per rep cutdown.
- Rep 1: 10K effort
- Rep 2: 10K-to-5K effort
- Rep 3: 5K effort
- Rep 4: 5K-to-3K effort
- Rep 5: 3K effort
Numbers are a guide; the real instruction is each rep faster than the last. Hit the cutdown and the paces take care of themselves.
Cooldown
- 10 minutes easy
- Stretch: calves, hamstrings, hip flexors, quads
Coach’s Notes
Cutdowns flip the mental script of a normal interval session. Instead of starting hard and trying to hold on, you start controlled and finish hard. That changes what the workout teaches. By the time rep 5 hits, you’re tired and you have to run faster than anything else in the session — which is what closing kilometers in a race feel like.
The discipline lives in rep 1. If you go out at 5K effort because you feel fresh, the cutdown is dead before it starts and the last two reps are misery. Rep 1 should feel almost too easy. If at the end of rep 1 you’re not slightly antsy to run faster, you got it right.
Two minutes jog recovery throughout — same recovery for every rep, even though the reps get harder. That’s part of the stimulus.
If rep 5 is your fastest 1000m of the year, you nailed it.
Scaling
Newer runners: 4 x 1000m descending, 3 minutes jog recovery. Or 5 x 800m at the same descending pattern with 2 minutes rest. Same idea, less load.
Advanced runners: 6 x 1000m descending, hold 2-minute recovery. The sixth rep should land in the neighborhood of mile race effort. Or run 5 reps but cut the recovery to 90 seconds — same paces, less rest.