DUMBEST workout you’ve done

Bless my high school coach, but man was he incompetent.

He was your typical 90s era coach, no mileage, all speed, no recovery days. No pain no gain. I don’t know how I didn’t get injured, here was a week from my old log (this is what most weeks looked like):

Mon 5x300 hills

as fast as possible (I’d almost always throw up during this workout)

6+ minute recovery

Tues 200 400 800 400

27, 62, 2:25, 61

walk recovery

Wed 3x200

28, 29, 28

Thurs

5K xc race 17:32

Fri

5K xc race 17:25

Sat

Rest

Sun

5.5 miles (On my own)

17.2 mile for the week!

Not one workout in particular but a series of choices resulting from me being dumb.

Had my last race of a very long and grueling indoor season on a Sunday. Coach gave us a 10x150m hill workout the Wednesday after. It was supposed to be relaxed but me and a few teammates decided to push the last reps to show how fit we were. Felt great on the workout and definitely a confidence booster heading into the outdoor season.

That Saturday I decided it would be a good idea for me to hop into a St. Patricks day 10k road race with some of the distance guys. Most had not raced since early February and had been doubling and tripling on flat and banked indoor tracks for the past 5 weeks so my body was pretty worn down. My coach was adamantly against me running the race but I told him it would be fine because I would not run it all out. Ended up finishing in 39 minutes, which was pretty good for me considering that I was more of a 4/8 type guy coming off an indoor peak and only took the race at a moderate effort. The next day was the most sore I had ever been after a race. I did a 45 minute run and I could barely lift my legs. I averaged around 8:20 pace for that run.

That Monday, the guys I usually worked out with were doing a 3 mile tempo on the road. I was still sore as heck from the race on Saturday and my coach wanted me to just do an easy run. I worried that if I did not do that workout, I would fall behind the guys in my workout group so I did the workout anyway.

The next day I developed peroneal tendonitis and could barely walk. I ended up having to bike from mid March to mid April. I missed most of the regular season as I was trying to get into shape. I was able to 1:55 for the 800 during championship season so I was happy with that. This ordeal taught me how to listen to my body and that missing one workout does not matter in the grand scheme of things. Its much better recover so you can train consistently.

Assistant football coach became distance track coach in HS. 6x600 at 800m race pace. I was the leader and teammates wondered out loud if it was an impossible workout. The top 4 guys were all 2 flat 800 runners, so we were supposed to hit 1:30 on these. I knew it was impossible, so I just ran low 1:40s and teammates followed suit. Coach said we had an off day.

We ran around a single tree for our entire 45 minute run

Middish tier D-1 Indoor track training

spiked up for three indoor track workouts a week, all at pace or faster. Each year there was usually one "go to workout" that was done weekly by every distance runner. One year it was 4 x 800 (2:14, 2:12, 2:10, 2:08) , the next year it was 4 x 600 (1:39, 1:37, 1:35, 1:30). Rest in between was half jog/walk.

First workout of the week done on Monday or Tuesday--no one knew which day until the day of. Because of this most people ran shortened 10 mile long runs on Sunday and if Coach asked just say they ran 14.

Sample week:

Monday: 1.5 miles at 5:20 pace straight into 60 second quarter. 400 jog. 60 second quarter. 400 jog. 60 second quarter. 400 jog. 60 second quarter. 400 jog. 60 second quarter.

Or

4 x 1200 m in 3:27 with half jog/walk

Wednesday: 4 x 600 meter breakdown (1:39, 1:37, 1:35, 1:30)

Saturday: race

I can't think of anything exceptionally dumb off the top of my head other than running injured and making it worse.

My dad was an 18:30 5ker at age 49. He decided to do his first marathon to join the cool kids club. The program he was following had him jogging 3-4 miles the day before the marathon. There was a huge thunderstorm the night before, so he decided to jog in place for 30 minutes. Oops!

Around mile 18, his calf started locking up from the jogging in place. Next thing he knew, it was limp in and try not to cry time. Instead of his goal of 3:10, he finished in 3:57 even though he routinely ran long runs of up to 28 miles at 3:25ish pace.

To make matters worse, he was never able to break 20 in the 5k again despite minimal time off afterwards. The marathon training had somehow ruined his speed and conditioning. He never got it back.

What a great thread--thanks, everybody!

My HS coach was a great guy and talented runner (won the first race he ran as a HS soph, ran Boston as a high schooler--in the '60s, when this was really unusual and prob. against the rules), but never went to college and never really picked up training theory. We were skinny and should have been able to run, but were all talentless (except for two mesomorphs, who were decent) and rookies, so clueless.

So we'd been training for a couple weeks (def. less than 20mpw, maybe less than 15) and had our first race coming up. Doug was unhappy with our strides--we were shufflers and just didn't look like runners--so a couple days before the meet he had us bound around our ~600yd training loop with exaggerated strides. I really wanted to be a better runner, so I bounded the whole way--the other guys interspersed walking or just half-assed the bounding.

My calves were destroyed and I had trouble walking around school for the next few days. The first race of my career wasn't pretty.

4th year in uni I decided to go hard or go home:

Did~ 16weeks like this:

M: easy 8+4+1h bike

T-1h bike + 30' split threshold

W 12@550 + 4easy

T 10' tempo +15x60'' hills +1h bike

F 2h bike

S fartleck e.g 3mile,2mile,1mile@505 with 0.5 float @6flat +bike

S 15 progression 6:30-5:30 +bike

Total 75/80miles with 5h bike

Got in great shape, ran 3010 for 9.8k cross ... But eventually got sick and had to take 3months off

100x100m strides. Took over 3hrs to complete w/ rest in between (1min). My hamstrings were shot for days. Not sure why coach had us do this - he was pretty old-school and felt we needed to “toughen up” and get our muscles “calloused”. For some reason my testicles were swollen after this workout ... Tons of “jarring” I’m guessing with the high volume + high intensity. Still laugh about this “workout”

Last year, in my junior year of high school, I get a new coach for indoor track who's also the football coach. The first practice, which was only a few days after I ran footlocker regionals with a couple of teammates, coach tells us that we’re scrawny and he’s turning us into athletes. He has everyone (sprinters, jumpers, distance runners) do a .25 mile warmup, 15 minutes of "heavy stretching", then 10 minutes of drills. Following that he had us do some sprints. I think it was 10 x 40-yard sprints all out. Afterward, we went straight to the weight room for an hour-long full-body lift. This was the first time I have ever lifted. After the workout, he pulls the distance runners aside and tells us to go jog on our own. We slogged at ten-minute pace for a few miles because that was all we could manage.

The next morning I could not walk (thankfully it was a Saturday) and it took two weeks until I could run without sharp pain in my "teardrop" quad muscle. The rest of my body was sore for about that long too. Football coach ended up quitting and leaving the school so the cross country coach was able to takeover thankfully.

I've got a couple:

1. Did this on my own a few years ago. 6x400m at a pace that was supposed to be mile pace but ended up somewhere around my pace for 1000m. Rest was 45s exactly. I was dead after 2 but didn't have much time to think about it. It was finish, turn around and get on the line. Stupid workout.

2. Sophomore year of HS: Goal was 4x1200m at mile pace. I forget the rest but it was definitely less than 3:00. We were about 10s slow on the first one. 30s slow on the second, coach switched it to 1000s for 3 and 4. Didn't fare much better.

T- Money for Tuna wrote:

Middish tier D-1 Indoor track training

spiked up for three indoor track workouts a week, all at pace or faster. Each year there was usually one "go to workout" that was done weekly by every distance runner. One year it was 4 x 800 (2:14, 2:12, 2:10, 2:08) , the next year it was 4 x 600 (1:39, 1:37, 1:35, 1:30). Rest in between was half jog/walk.

First workout of the week done on Monday or Tuesday--no one knew which day until the day of. Because of this most people ran shortened 10 mile long runs on Sunday and if Coach asked just say they ran 14.

Sample week:

Monday: 1.5 miles at 5:20 pace straight into 60 second quarter. 400 jog. 60 second quarter. 400 jog. 60 second quarter. 400 jog. 60 second quarter. 400 jog. 60 second quarter.

Or

4 x 1200 m in 3:27 with half jog/walk

Wednesday: 4 x 600 meter breakdown (1:39, 1:37, 1:35, 1:30)

Saturday: race

These workouts really don't seem so ridiculous, outside of the fact that people would do short long runs to prepare for the possibility of a Monday workout.

In the aggregate week after week, this schedule is just asking for injuries and burnout