What are the most cringe workouts?

Agreed. I actually don’t think they’re that necessary though - my key race sharpening workout for a 15:30 5k was 6x800 at 2:35, 60 second rest, 1x1609 at 4:59, 2 minute rest, 4x300 going from 51 to 48

i would say this. the slowest guy in our sunday long run group always pushes the first 5 miles and then gets dropped and finishes way behind.

although i was totally guilty of this when i was younger. ahhhh wellllll....

I think this is more of an issue for either good but neither very good nor deep teams, or very good teams whose 1-5 spread is basically 0.

during my senior year, we had nearly 15 races, but 2 were early season (get re-acquainted with racing), 4 were uncompetitive league meets - I could either run tempo and win, or we’d race a great team where we had no shot so running tempo would be fine - a couple other meets were on slow courses, and then there were 3-4 meets where I’d go all out. This wouldn’t work, however, if you’re the #4 or #5 because you’ll probably be about ~17:00 to 17:30, so you’ll be racing 15 times which is a recipe for burnout. We typically had a different #5 and maybe a 6/7 at the end of the season because of this

Definitely this.

I have quite a few acquaintances that are Strava warriors e.g. guys that run their "easy" runs at the same pace as elites, who are 5 minutes faster over 5k.

It's so transparently an ego thing. The irony is that it doesn't make you think, "Gee, that guys fast", but more, "Gee, that guys insecure - and also dumb as sh*t."

14 mile "recovery" runs on Strava

MP Long Runs every weekend for months, followed by a terrible marathon and a "it just wasn't my day" instagram post.

20x440 with 220 jog recovery.

This was Igloi's go-to that he could pull out of his hat at any time.

It might be fresh swing, good speed, broken into 4 sets of 5, it didn't matter. It was still 20x440.

I ran some variant of this so many times in 3 years that after I left Igloi, I never ran another session of quarter miles again.

Do you happen to have a good memory for some of the other workouts? I have tried to learn all I can about Igloi training in the last few years. There were a couple former athletes that I got workout plans from, I think one of them has sadly passed on. It's a fascinating system, but it seems like it is at least as mentally hard as physically hard... Which is to say, quite difficult!

Pretty much all of Zap’s workouts: always an odd number of repeats of an odd number length, like 7 or 9 by 900m or 1km repeats or 3 x 1500m then 3 x 500

they also do “snowball” fartlek repeats, increasing pace every 30 seconds, or floats that they call “assertions”

My cringe was having my dad as a coach in high school, who either wouldn’t give me workouts at all or would have me do the exact training he did as an adult runner to train for the road race circuit of Southeastern Connecticut. This has me running backwards in races, especially XC

looking for an answer to “Better” training I latched onto the training of fellow high school runner Gavin Coombs, whose coach was obsessed with “threshold” training. Thinking this and mileage was the secret, I insisted on doing this above all else during my post grad year at boarding school

that (not to mention a host of my own neuroses) messed me up for the training of Al Cantello at the Naval Academy, who was big into his own cringe training. Besides just being a dick: starting every workout in the middle of the track, short repeats at much faster than race pace with a long, jogging rest. Doing that and telling us not to eat. For me personally, it messed up my ability to train myself after college. Because I thought the only way to train for a 10k was doing 3 x 1km in 2:50. Or that getting ready for a 5k meant doing 1km in 2:40, slow jog, then 800m all out

finally had some sucess with a post collegiate coach who focused on: being normal and smart, and doing layered workouts that focused on race pace. (He worked under centro sr. Learned from Sr’s training but not his behavior)

Came to say this ^^

this is true. the thing is, most teams are not the best team. and most runners are not the best runners.

I knew a guy who would do runs with nunchucks. Apparently there was some steepler/hurdler he was emulating that did the same thing to great results. The thing was though this guy never raced the steeple nor hurdles in the four years I knew him, so he was just showing up to practice with nunchucks for no reason.

Prob anything with “2x600m at goal 800m pace” — like that’s a serious effort, how many people are actually gonna hit that in practice. We’re not all a bunch of Mahkloufi’s. Just got air.

I had a first year college cross country coach (former Olympic long jumper) who had been given a workout from a far more experienced local college cross country coach. After a 3 mile warmup we ran 5 x mile repeats with 2 minute rest. Then we jogged a mile and did 10 x 400s with 110 jog rest with another recovery mile. Upon return we ran a 2 mile for time followed by 20 x 200s. During the 18 miles of intervals that horrible September morning, fewer and fewer runners toed the line. I stuck it out. Years later while coaching a high school cross country team I was having drinks with that local college cross country coach that provided the insane workout. He had heard about the misinterpretation of his advice.

What was it? He gave all of those workouts separately and the guy mashed them all up into a Frankensteinian monstrosity?

Yasso 800s?

Yeah for me definitely the weekend long run, specifically summer weekend long runs, because it means getting up early to beat the worst of the heat, and where I live, even then you're not really beating the heat because you've still got the humidity to contend with, and then the rest of the day is kinda shot because you're tired and sore.