Worst Race you have EVER run?

Second year in college I finished last in my conference steeplechase running the same time I had as either a freshman or sophemore in HIGH SCHOOL! I was recovering from mono and shouldn't have been running, but thought that maybe I could score and get the team a point. That was April of 2005. That July I broke my ankle and haven't raced since.

Pretty effing sweet.

League meet - Jr year of HS - 800m

Had a PR of 1:56 at the time and was favored to win the race. I have no memory of what happened during the race, but I ran 2:07 for 8th or 9th. After the race I was coughing out small amounts of blood in the locker room.

Furman Invite XC 2005

The worst race I have ever run...I ran around 28:50 and given that I ran a shade over 25 min for 8k at Nationals it sucked big time. To make matters worse my Coach asked to see "the miler kick" at the end. I was humilated:)Damn was that a bad day...

Jeremy

Peachtree 10K a few years ago.

I was not in the shape that I was in younger days, so I wasn't going to break 40, but I thought sub 42 was in the bag and was going to give 41 a shot.

So I "ran" over 49, with plenty of dehydrated walking thrown in. My pace was slower than my normal recovery pace. Just one of those days, and I have never DNF'd and didn't feel like starting then.

It was kidney stones. Everybody thought I choked. After surgery and a few more races I was running normal times. Don't neglect the physical even if you have no other symptoms.

Did a 3x1500m workout in something like 4:25, 4:21, 4:15....a week later I "raced" 1500m in 4:11!!! WTF? Knew I was tired, knew I needed some rest....ran every second day for 12 days....then raced 3000m in 8:37.....second half in 4:16! :)

Every marathon I've ever entered since that one day I had my moment of glory. I always get "hurt" or something unexplainable makes me drop out. Maybe I should just give it up.

Ran a 1:16 half-marathon last fall, 4 weeks later split 1:16 at Chicago finishing in 2:34:52

Alan

similar story here but it didn't happen to me, a teamate of mine was spiked in the balls(kid tripped in front of him and kicked his leg out) less than 400 meters into the race, continued running and finished the race, the white spandex he was wearing were completely red by the end of the race

A local big name 5k, I went out and did the first mile in 4:49 (at 5,000ft) and finished in 19:44. I must have gone out too fast or something...

On a Monday ran a set of 8 300s at 43,42,41,40,40,39,41,36 with a 150 jog recovery. Ended up running 2:04 (800m)the following Saturday. Sadly my PR for the year ended up being 2:02 in part due to my coach thinking 10 miles a week with a lot of speed work was plenty for an 800m runner.

Thanks for the kind words. It sucks cause I thought that last week was gonna be my breakout race, my legs were feeling great. But workouts are going great so I know racing will come along very soon.

boy I can relate to this thread right now... had great workouts and was expecting a huge PR, and ran 2 minutes off of my goal... so embarrassing, as almost my whole team was watching the race. i know i was tired from workouts but boy did i do bad... dreading the talk with my coach later.

I ran a 4:46 1500 when my PR was 4:08. Found out later that I had borderline pneumonia, so taking it out in 64 was...not a good idea.

ran 9:45 one weekend for 3200 this indoor then ran 10:2x the next weekend at the same place but bigger meet

I had just run 26:09 and two weeks later my girlfriend came to visit and after a "long night" I ran 29:30 the next morning at our home meet. Coach says "what were you up all night banging Jenny?" "you got it."

freshman regional race in high school ran a 16:58 off of a 5:05 first mile chillin in the back of the lead pack..top 15 made it to state..14th place.

state comes along...i get the flu and throw up during the meet in 80 degrees with major hills...i finished with my slowest time of the year in 18:03 but i finished and by god i felt better knowing some unlucky bast*rd would have to clean up my throw up!

This is still tough for me to recount. This is true. Senior year, county finals XC - 3 miles. While I certainly wasn't the best runner in the state, I was in the mix and a heavy favorite in this particular race. Hot November day (high 80s and no humidity) and my division was the last race of the day (noonish). There were @ least 2 false starts due to someone falling. When we finally got off clean, I found the lead @ about 1000 meters or so and opened up a nice lead by 1.5 miles. Don't remember feeeling terrible, but was not cruising either. By 2 and 1/4 I'm leading by 50 to 70 meters, pushing hard like I usually did. Pretty steep hill and I remember climbing it and hurting, but not a whole lot differently from the many other times I'd raced it. It was hot, my throat was dry. So what. Came down the hill with the same lead; 800 or so to go to a relatively easy section title. It was on a flat stretch after the downill when it all hit me. Remember ringing and a strange suction feeling in my ears and then, everyting black. Woke up to a news camera guy snapping photos of me and my Dad getting ready to deck him. Rest of the race had gone by - coaches had to help me up. DNF. Team did not run well enough to move on. No regionals, no state finals (which I had qualified for as an an individual years prior). Season over. Decent track season in the spring and went on to run well in college, but this one, this one damn race . . . still haunts me.

I'm a mid distance guy. I mostly run the 800m, but I also run the 1500m fairly regularly and sometimes run the 3K indoor. Outside of a few local road races, I really never race longer than 3K.

Anyway, USATF XC Nationals was held near my school one year, so our coach decided that a few of us should run. Despite the fact that I'd never run an XC race before and that I'd never raced longer than 3K, I went ahead and ran the 12K XC race.

Being used to much shorter and faster races, I got out way too fast. I felt great through a quarter mile or so, but when I looked around and realized that I was right in the middle of the pack of guys who were actually trying to make the team for World XC, I knew I was in trouble. I tried to cool the pace a bit, but the damage was done. By the 4K mark, I was completely cooked. My pace fell way off and people were streaming by me on both sides. By 8K, pretty much everyone had passed me and I was running all by myself behind the whole field. The top few guys lapped me on their final lap (the race consisted of 6 2K loops).

My average pace ended up being about what I'd run for a distance run. When I looked at my splits, I basically ran a few low three kilometers, then immediately dropped to 4+ pace for the rest of the race. I usually don't get down over bad results, but that was the one race where I'm truly embarrassed to have the final time attached to my name.