Ladder Training: increase until failure, then decrease to starting point

Doing exercise until failure is always a mental battle for me. I've experienced it doing weights, push ups, pull ups, sit ups, ... etc, where you reach a point where you are unable to continue: all forward progress stops. I've also done it on the bike now. 
Today it was a ladder up a local small hill (Prayer Mountain): starting in my lowest gear and then going up one gear until I couldn't make it. (Last time I tried it I had a mechanical problem in 4th and stopped at that point.) Today I reached failure on the 6th climb: I was not able to continue forward movement. At that point I then turned around and went back down, this began the descent down the ladder. I went down 1 gear and did the climb; repeating until I was in my lowest gear again. So I ended up doing it 10 times successfully with one failure in the middle. [Gears: 1-2-3-4-5-6Failure-5-4-3-2-1] 
It was a good workout. I could defiantly feel my thighs burning on the climbs once I started hitting the harder gears. There was also a little relief once I finally hit the gear I couldn't make it in: it marked the end of the accent up the ladder and now I could start the descent. Mentally I had decided to do this before I ever left the house - I have to. If I wait until I'm on the bike it is to likely that I'll not feel like doing it, or the wind, or ... many different excuses seem to come to mind once on the bike. So for me, I plan my work outs in advance.

 

My fastest time was in my 3rd gear on the descent of the ladder: 59 seconds. My heart rate on that climb started at 108 and went to 172 - a gain of more than a beat per second; Cool..! Gears 4 and 5 required me to be out of the saddle most of the time applying as much power as I could muster (while my bike was creaking and groaning under the stress). The last time in my lowest gear took the same amount of time as my first trip in the same gear: ~90 seconds. I stayed in the saddle in the lowest gear and found at times I was lifting the front wheel off the ground as I was pulling on the handle bars while climbing. It'd be fun to do with someone, not as a competition but for the fun of encouraging each other to do our bests. Any takers??  :-) 

The intent was not a long work out, but an effective one. The total miles was ~10.5, but the ride took 52 minutes after 9 minutes of warm up (not enough) and 12 minutes of cool down.

For Lunch: I was really wanting some chicken and veggies (I even prepared the chicken before I left for my ride: (trimmed up two chicken breasts, cubed, added a little Lawry's season, garlic powder, fresh black pepper, cumin, and curry and sealed it in a bowl to marinate) - but I just didn't have time to fix it after the work out. So instead it was a liquid lunch: to the Vita-Mix I added: soy milk, filtered water, millet, flax seeds, blue berries, spinach, whey protein powder, carob powder, nestle quick chocolate powder, almonds, ice and olive oil; then in no time I had this purplish - green liquid to drink for lunch. It wasn't my favorite drink as it was to thin - but it had what I felt like I needed. 

[PHOTOS: HR chart of the ladder, Shot at the top after my last one, my trusty steed resting by the sign.]