Weirdest workout you've run or seen run

I had a HS coach who, the summer between my junior and senior year, wanted me to run the mile at one of his summer park district twilight track meets for little kids. It was against the rules, of course, and I wasn't in very good shape because a girlfriend has been occupying a lot of my time that summer.

Didn't want to disappoint the old coach, but didn't want to make an ass of myself, either. Was hanging out with the girlfriend on that sticky July evening, and told her we needed to stop by the HS track for "a couple of minutes".

She wasn't too happy, but we went anyway.

I propped the girlfriend up on the track curb leading out of the stadium, near the exit gate and told her I'd be out of this meet in no time, just be patient. Coach was pleased to see me and was no doubt expecting me to be in the 4:20 shape I'd ended track season two months previous.

There was no way to satisfy everyone, but I had to at least make some attempt at looking fit. So I ripped through the first lap (against some freshmen and sophs) in 63 seconds, and the coach's happiness was evident in his voice as I tore past him after one lap. His joy reverberated through the stillness of the evening, and he wasn't a real joyous type of guy.

Instead of turning into the curve, however, I kept on going straight. I grabbed the girlfriend in my arms, and kept running out of the stadium until we disappeared over the next horizon. We finally collapsed in laughter.

My coach was a no-nonsense guy and ordinarily there would have been hell to pay for pulling off a stunt like that. The coolest thing was that he never mentioned that incident to me afterwards. Maybe he recalled some of his youthful wilder moments.

Eddy, I heard you still do that workout from time to time...

to answer your question, guest, a michigan is basically made up of hard, fast intervals of a 1600, 1200, 800, and 400 with "recovery" of one mile at 10k race pace in between each.

here's an article on it if you want to bother reading it:

http://www.michiganrunner.net/features/warhurst.html

Wasn't a workout, but my senior of high school at the home meet, was on world record pace through the quarter in the mile race. Needless to say that 56 second lap came calling later in the race.

1. in the middle of a ~13, I ran 7 or 8 with my mouth closed - faster than you would believe I'm thinkin

2. our college team ran a 24 hr relay ... 10 guys. each runs 1 mi, hands to next etc to 1st runner -- see how far the total distance is after 24hrs. We did have 5 or 6 or 7 (can't remember) ave 4:40s (range from low 40s to hi)... not too bad. Started at 6 or 7am. From 2am on I'm seein things on the not so well lit backstretch.

In order to insure that easy days were easy, our coach used to have us carry a single brick while we ran a 4 miler. You would hold it for a while and then switch hands when your arm got tired. It really slowed you down...

Montgomery

Jedi Run/Workout - No talking allowed, only telepathic communication allowed.

I had heard of this, and mentioned it to my college coach, his reply was "you don't know how close you were to doing that one"

This was just plain stupid ...

A mile or so away from our urban high school was a field with a nice hilly trail running around it. Our coach had us run repeats around the loop there one week. The next week the lazy sack told a couple of the seniors to take the team over and do the same workout. We got there and on the first loop, someone threw a dirt clod and nailed someone else on the back of the head and all hell broke loose: A full-scale dirt fight with bloody foreheads and bruises and all. Obviously the workout was abandoned. Then ... our number three man, diving for cover, fell onto a scrap of lumber and rammed a rusty nail straight through his hand. The entire varsity ended up walking back to school with him, two of us carrying the offending board and trying to figure out what we were going to tell the coach.

When I was in high school we ran indoor practices in our second floor hallway. At least once every year my coach would have the whole team, sprinters, distance runners and field people, run 354s. The hallway was a square so we'd start at the second turn, run a lap and a half and then another straight. To this day I don't know what the purpose was.

Back in high school before I got a car. It was snowing and icy out, but I wanted to go to my girlfriends house. So I put on the track spikes and got a quick two mile run in to her house. Isn't it amazing what raging hormones will do to you.

Today our workout was water polo. I made it a triathlon by running before the water polo and then biking after.

So technically, you did leave the house. When I was in 6th grade and it was 15 below 0 in Chicago. I did 100 laps around my tiny bedroom.

In high school we had a nut ball coach who thought we need to work on our downhill running for cross. It was the end of the season and we had our biggest race two days later so the nut has us do 6x800m downhill repeats on an uneven trail all out. However he thinks some of our problem is that we're too tight so he brings a huge can of that atomic balm stuff (kinda like extra strength Bengay) that sprinters use to warm up. He tells us to rub it on our backs, knees and thighs and we will be able to fly down the hills and won't get sore for the meet. Well, I knew what that stuff was and didn't want any part of it so I faked like i was taking some and rubing it in. some of the guys didn't know what it was and they took huge handfuls and after a few seconds were jumping out of their skin becuase it was burning so much. I was dying laughing and jogged the workout. some of the fair skined guys actually got a rash from what I think was actually a chemical burn.

is that the same gary henry that ran fr uncp in the 1970's?

One and the same! Are you familiar with the fine Pembroke contingent of the time?

that 100 x 100 workout seems eerily familiar. We do that at my high school as part of our crazy hell week every year during spring break. Sunday we do 32 x 200, tuesday is 100 x 100, and thursday is 16 x 400 w/ 100 jog. Needless to say, if you can walk from the house to your car on friday morning to come for practice you are doing well.

That's when we get our greatest workout in. D-team basketball. 2 on 2 full court round robin tournament. About 3 hours of non-stop hardcore fundamental skinny white kid basketball.

that is not healthy for a young runner. i'm surprised that all of your team mates do not have stress fractures. maybe your coach is not afraid of burn out.

I had this older english guy as a coach in high school and he had some of the craziest and hardest workouts i've ever done:

1. When i was 13 he had me do diagonals on a soccer field until HE got tired of watching. Anyways it took 64 laps of the field until he finally got bored.

2. We would do sandhills every couple weeks up a hill that must have been on a 45 degree angle, and as we ran up he would push sand from the top down at us to make the footing that much softer, we also had to do them until we couldn't walk anymore...then we would just lay at the top for about 10-15min and then slowly make our way to the bottom.

3.Another workout called "Gut-Buster" which was 3*300m, 2*400m at 100% with 1 min between each and 10 between the sets. By the last 400m you just wanted to die.

too many workouts to list.....