Dumbest Workout You’ve Ever Done

I've got a winner. 1600m at 5k pace, 2x1200m at mile effort, 800m at mile effort. Could barely run for the rest of the week. This was supposed to be a tune up for the last race of our season

Here’s not one but three examples of why my highschool coaches were rarted and why I was injured all of the time

1) I was once assigned 12 laps of “300m at 800-1600 pace with 100m jog at 5k pace for recovery”

2) the sweet Jesus dice workout: coach would roll 2 die, you’d add those 2 numbers, slap on 2 0s and run that for your rep. They also assigned mile pace to this workout for 10 reps.

3) Track meet simulation workout. 1600m, 800m, 400m, 3200m, 400m. They expected this to be within 10 seconds per mile of PR pace for that event. This is the workout that blew my hamstring out in the last 400m and took away a season that most likely would have landed me a scholarship.

F U coach.

Not a 'workout' technically but when I was in school I did a XC and was exhausted, talking to my coach afterwards I told her I'll take it easy the next day and stick to 8:00 pace for recovery. Unfortunately, she was one of those coaches who believes that nonsense about 'junk miles' so she laughed at me and told me that 8:00 is too slow and I should keep it no slower than 7:00 pace. I tried running at 7:00 pace and pulled my hanstring, was out for several months.

GWT wrote:

I once had an athlete who joined our team who's previous coach ONLY gave her 200 repeats for workouts, through an entire year of running. I could guess her answer to your question.

Not "who's"

Two weeks into the outdoor competitive season, the coach assigned our group 8 x 400m at 800m race pace.

I don't know whether our coach meant to tell us mile pace, or if the repeats were supposed to be 200m, or what. But we took the workout at face value, and went & attempted it.

Of the group, I ran the workout closest to 800m pace for all 8 repeats. Trashed my legs and ruined my season.

A couple of years later, towards the end of my senior season, we were reviewing my college career and my coach said that this session had been a mistake. Oh well, what are you gonna do? I also made plenty of training mistakes and messed myself up.

we (distance group) did 32 200m repeats with 200 jog recovery. isnt 200m speed work but doing 32 you can sprint that many. just didn't get what we were trying to accomplish

British Guy wrote:

Not a 'workout' technically but when I was in school I did a XC and was exhausted, talking to my coach afterwards I told her I'll take it easy the next day and stick to 8:00 pace for recovery. Unfortunately, she was one of those coaches who believes that nonsense about 'junk miles' so she laughed at me and told me that 8:00 is too slow and I should keep it no slower than 7:00 pace. I tried running at 7:00 pace and pulled my hanstring, was out for several months.

If you are a coach re-read this. The cardinal rule of coaching distance running is "listen to your kids." There are very few words you should disregard from most of them!