Has anyone ever attempted Quenton Cassady's famed 3x (20x400m) workout and come out alive?

Ca$hclay wrote:

Other options wrote:

20 x 400 is not that hard. 1/3 of your team shouldn't have been dropping out.

You lost all credibility with your opening sentences. We ran them @ 1500 race pace: 60-63 depending on your 1500 time with 1 min recovery. Go do that, then come back and tell me it is "not that hard." 5 miles @ 4:00 to 4:12 pace is a back-breaker workout and anyone who says different is 1) trolling or 2) has not done it.

Obviously pace matters - you failed to mention your pace in your initial post. I'll admit I had similar thoughts as "Other options" when I first read your post.

20x400 can potentially be a very easy workout or a very hard workout, depending on pace and recovery time. Neither of you have "lost all credibility" or are "trolls". You were commenting on different workouts, that happen to cover the same distance over the same number of intervals.

runningart2004 wrote:

I did 20x400 once in high school. It was august. Took a very long time.

What would the purpose of 60 x 400 be? At what pace would this make sense? You could possibly do this as a long "cruise interval" workout or even slightly slower.

Another question...what if you went completely old school and did nothing but interval based training while still keeping decent mileage? This would be quite a good experiment. Very old training methods were either time trials or extensive intervals. They also included off days or recovery days of walking. I think one could still be quite the runner on 5 or 6 days of actual training. Runners have a tendency to never really recover or actually adapt to a training stimulus.

Alan

The appropriate pace would be around your current 10K fitness if you wanted it to be extremely difficult, or around HM fitness if you didn't want it to be too hard. The purpose would be like any other workout, break the body down a bit in hopes it will compensate and be stronger...right?

It'd be a couple hour workout. It's not that big of a deal for a higher mileage runner in their prime.

Ummm...you all realize he is not a real person and the book was a work of fiction. I wonder how many other fictional activities in books you all will try.

Fiction. Mitchin' wrote:

Ummm...you all realize he is not a real person and the book was a work of fiction. I wonder how many other fictional activities in books you all will try.

Yeah, this was pointed out earlier in the thread. Repeating it won't stop many letsrunners from discussion how if they have ever tried to match a fictional feat.

The more I hear about that stupid book, the gladder I am to have never read it.

- Bernard

asdfe wrote:

Ca$hclay wrote:

You lost all credibility with your opening sentences. We ran them @ 1500 race pace: 60-63 depending on your 1500 time with 1 min recovery. Go do that, then come back and tell me it is "not that hard." 5 miles @ 4:00 to 4:12 pace is a back-breaker workout and anyone who says different is 1) trolling or 2) has not done it.

Obviously pace matters - you failed to mention your pace in your initial post. I'll admit I had similar thoughts as "Other options" when I first read your post.

20x400 can potentially be a very easy workout or a very hard workout, depending on pace and recovery time. Neither of you have "lost all credibility" or are "trolls". You were commenting on different workouts, that happen to cover the same distance over the same number of intervals.

This is what I was going to say. I've done 20x400 with 45-60 seconds rest countless times and wouldn't consider it a very hard workout. But when I do it only the last 1-5 reps are anywhere near mile pace. Most of them are 3K-5K pace and the first couple 2-3 are more like 10K pace as you warm-up into it. A good workout, but not a ball buster by any means.

20x400 at mile pace would be very hard.

20 x 400 w/ 1 min rec at mile pace is almost impossible unless you're going off a pr you are in much better shape then. When I said Mo has done 20 @ 57 you understand his mile pace is 55 right? Why do you think milers do 10-12 x 400 as an indicator workout? If a professional can't run the workout at mile pace you can't. I'm calling you out for your bs. That or your coach wanted you guys to run to exhaustion and drop. Which is also stupid.

Both our men's and women's team did 20 x 400m on a regular basis (3K-5K pace). It was hard, but nothing compared to the OAR workout. I believe he was doing them in 60 sec if I remember correctly? I doubt anyone has done 60 X 400m in 60 sec each in real life and lived to tell about it.

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

Both our men's and women's team did 20 x 400m on a regular basis (3K-5K pace). It was hard, but nothing compared to the OAR workout. I believe he was doing them in 60 sec if I remember correctly? I doubt anyone has done 60 X 400m in 60 sec each in real life and lived to tell about it.

63s for msot of it

metric system cheerleader wrote:

First of all, it was 440y, which as we all know is about 8 ft longer than 400m.

The more interesting question is:

Have any of you done something like this clockwise, or switching directions every 5 or 10 intervals, or just all of it counter-clockwise?

In high school we would do 20 x 440y and switch directions after every set of 5. The first one or two felt a bit strange but then it was fine.

adsfasfffffds wrote:

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

Both our men's and women's team did 20 x 400m on a regular basis (3K-5K pace). It was hard, but nothing compared to the OAR workout. I believe he was doing them in 60 sec if I remember correctly? I doubt anyone has done 60 X 400m in 60 sec each in real life and lived to tell about it.

63s for msot of it

63 second effort - no watch. I'm sure the pace deteriorated as the workout went on.

I think the whole discussion is moronic.

It's easy to make any kind of session work for a fictional runner. All you have to do is write "and it was awesome, and then he was in really good shape", and your mission is accomplished.

In real life, it would be really stupid to all of a sudden triple your usual workout that is already fairly hard. That would be like if you usually did 5 x 1 mile, and then one day you went out and did 3 x 5 x mile.

OAR is not fictional. It is based on events that the really happened. The names were changed to protect the personal privacy of the characters.

reader of OAR wrote:

adsfasfffffds wrote:

63s for msot of it

63 second effort - no watch. I'm sure the pace deteriorated as the workout went on.

This. And everyone keeps saying it was mile pace. It was more like 3k-5k pace as his mile pace was sub60. And he says the last sets (past 40) fell off badly, and likely the pace fell off from 63 to 67/68 after 20.

OAR it the bomb wrote:

OAR is not fictional. It is based on events that the really happened. The names were changed to protect the personal privacy of the characters.

The key phrase here is "based on." For example, how many horror movies have started with that same disclaimer?

Dweeboids wrote:

I think the whole discussion is moronic.

It seemed more like a simple question.

Has anyone ever attempted it?

No one so far but I wouldn't be surprised if someone here did.

I am assuming you were calling me out, as opposed to Soprano. I can assure you that the workout was very real. Thus, the reason I called OARs workout "fiction" and mine "awful." It's actually a fairly common workout both in terms of pace and 1:1 rest amongst milers.

Couple of other things about it I did not include:

1) If you did not hit your 1500 pace, coach added another.

2) If you rested longer than a minute, coach added another.

From what I remember, the coach never really added another as the field got cut by natural attrition anyway and he always let the athletes who were left standing slide.

Finally, the milers (me) always got hosed on this workout because we knew our 400 race pace for 1500 and could not hide from it. The smart 5/10K guys could run a tick or two slower and survive. Of course, most of them would try and run with the milers and paid dearly.

It was once a year, right about now and we all knew it was coming as coach would announce it that week. I think there may be some truth to your last sentence in that regard.

We did 16x400 in high school with about 2-3 min rest in between.

In college we did 20x400 but only had 15 sec rest in between (but a lap rest between each set of 5). This was obviously more of an endurance building workout.

That makes my hips hurt just thinking about running all that curve.