We All Know What the Hardest Race Ever is, But What's the Easiest?

Individual events, not counting relays, but there really aren't that many more counting the relays either.

Are we are talking about technical difficulty or hardest due to having the most intolerable pain?

If you are talking about technical difficulty the 55,100,200 ect. should not be considered. They are very hard to do correctly with blocks, starts, finishes, and acceleration each must be made into an art. It takes patience, quick reaction, focus, and a ton of practice in it to be successful. For least technical difficulty I might go for the 1500/1 mile. I find it one of the easier distances to learn and it is not too long either.

If you are talking pain then probably the 55/60. Since these are activities for about 6 seconds or less you hardly feel a moment of pain in them at all. In my opinion the first "painful" race is probably the 200. The first 100 is very much painless but in the second you get about 60 meters of sharp pain.

So depending on your defintion of "Easy" it is either the 1 mile or the 55/60.

osm wrote:

Just stop. Any runner or non-runner at any distance or skill level will tell you that racing a 100 is easier than racing a mile. Does the 100 require a great deal of skill and precise execution? Of course. But distance races require an equal amount of skill in other areas, and they are more physically painful and psychologically demanding.

I have won the 100 at a high school dual meet and the 1500 at college conference championship.

I'm telling you I think the 100 is the harder race to execute.

During the NCAAs championships...it's the 1500!

I don't think the 800 is all that hard. How many times have you run it coming back on a relay? It's not the much faster open.

What's hard or easy is based on your training. If you train for the 1500 the 800 isn't too bad because you can cover it and you probably don't have the speed to get yourself too far out early.

The marathon is the toughest because you can't replicate in training or do it every other week.

The easiest race is the race that you've fully trained, peaked, rested, and mentally prepared for.

The last couple races at the end of good season always seemed the easiest.

body master wrote:

Just stop posting. You know nothing about the sport.

OF COURSE any distance runner can complete a sprint workout. And most sprinters can't comlete a distance workout. That means NOTHING. What you SHOULD ask yourself is what do distance runners consider the hardest workouts? The LONG workouts or the SPEED workouts? Any distance runner will tell you the speed workouts are harder. Relative to how slow they are compared to real sprinters, its a safe bet to say that sprint workouts are harder than distance workouts.

Lol, funny you said that they should stop posting because they don't know anything about the sport. Can someone say Irony?

As a collegiate distance runner, I can tell you that doing a 6-10 mile tempo or 10 x 1000m is a hell of a lot harder than doing ANY 200m workout. or repeat 400s. or anything like that. Why? Because it's psychologically easy to get through the sprint workout. don't know why you seem to imply that the distance folks to be doing the workouts at sprinter's paces but I guess you would know better, being the sea of knowledge that you are on the topic

body master wrote:

oh pleaseee wrote:

Bull. How often do you see sprinters doubling and tripling in events? All the time. How often do you see elite distance runners even doubling in say 800/1500 or 5k/10k? Rarely. Much harder on your body. The intensity is higher in sprinting but it's for a very brief period.

rofl? What a terrible point. First, you mention elite runners so i don't see any sprinters that can "triple" in individual events. And secondly, distance runners double all the time.

The point is horrible because the great discrepancy between 100m and 200m doubling vs 800 to 1500, 5k/10k doubling. Any 100m runner can do the 200m well as long as they can run a good bend.

You don't ever see sprinters that triple?? LOL then you don't watch enough track and field. 100, 200, 4x100 is a common triple. Johnson used to do the 200, 400 and 4x400.

And yes there is great discrepancy. That's the point. That's why they're harder. I wasn't aware we we're allowed to compare all events across the board... This isn't an apples to apples discussion. I can compare the apple to whatever fruit I want.

Half marathon.

To all the people talking about how "easy" sprint training is...

I've never looked at a typical sprinter's training in-depth, but one of our coaches was an Olympic medalist at a sprint event. He said he basically couldn't even walk off the track after some of the tough workouts. I've never heard of a distance workout going that far at any level, short of a marathon race.

Personally I would also prefer almost any running workout to an equivalent lifting or strength training workout. In something like 10 x 1k, the first five are going to be easy, the last two might be really tough but aren't meant to destroy you. With weights you're often going to failure multiple times.

This is just my opinion of course, but I think reaching the WR time in each track event would be equally difficult, i.e. achieving the world record at the 100m would be just as difficult as reaching the 1500m WR. They would have difficulty levels in their own way. As far as physical and psychological demand, the 100 would be less so psychologically and physcially taxing on the CNS vs. the 10,000 meter run.

I also believe due to CNS fatigue, the WR in the marathon would be the most difficult to reach, out of all running events up to that point.