Dumbest workouts you've done

100x100 barefoot

10 sets of 10x100 accelerations (10 sec rest) 300 rest between sets

Stupidest workout: Junior year, late fall, post-XC. My buddy and I agree that distance running is fun but hard speedwork sucks, so we decide that the way to enjoy the upcoming track season is to do hard speedwork first--get it over with--then do our distance during the actual season (hey, this was the 70s, and there weren't ready sources of training info!). So we do a workout of 12 x 200 in 28-29. A week later, when we could walk again, we went back to developing a distance base and then incrementally building speed. I'll never forget Coach Logan's reaction as we limped in from that workout. He didn't berate us. He just laughed like hell. (Postscript: Working with Coach Logan and our high school teammates, we ran 1:56 and 1:57 for 880 later that year. Apparently, base then speed worked ... Who knew? LOL!)

Stupidest training: Summer before senior year. David Francis and I run every distance run like a time trial (80 miles per week worth). We start the summer running 14:30-ish for 3 miles. We finish like this: David has a tibial stress fracture; I've got pneumonia (I suspect from a weakened immune system). Needless to say, XC that year was a disappointment.

I see what you did there. Quite the 'novel' post.

10 x 400 hard to see if an injured hip was ready to get back into running ... whaddaa idiot

My College coach gave each pace group a paper bag with a famous outlaw on it. Mine was Billy the Kid. Inside each bag were a bunch of random times written down. Each person would draw 3 times and the rest would stay in the bag. We (the pace group) were supposed to run as hard as we could for however long the time written down. We would start with one of us and rotate through the group. Catch was who ever we were going off of had to keep their duration secret.

1 kid didn't have a watch and just counted using his arm like a freaking lever. I got hurt from this and missed my senior year of track and half XC.

Not one workout, but one summer. After running maybe 50 mpw during my freshmen cross season with a modest 3 mile time of 17:10, I decided I wanted to be a hurdler in track. Did workouts with the hurdle guys from Jan-May and while my hurdle times sucked, I did get my 400 to high 55's and 800 to 2:10. Not sure on mileage while a hurdler but couldn't have been more than 30 mpw.

Come June summer cross starts and I decide I want to go all in for the next cross season. Ran 11-12 times per week and probably 100 mpw from Jun-Oct. Ran for a program where we ran intervals 3-4x per week and I made sure to race every workout.

Amazingly I didn't get hurt and I seemed to handle the workouts, but my race results were horrible. Ended up running 16:50 for 3 miles and 10:50 for 2 miles. Was absolutely fried come meets. That track season my 800 time stayed flat and my 400 time went to 58.

Luckily I realized the error of my ways and cut back to a more reasonable 80 mpw from then on with limited doubles. Had a respectable season as a senior running 1:58 for 800 and 15:25 for 3 miles.

6x400 @ 61

win an argument on Letsrun

6x200@ 27

Senior year of college my XC team got busted for having a house party the day after our regional meet, the season was over after that meet as nobody was headed to nationals. Because my coach was a psycho we showed up to practice on a Monday during what I thought was going to be our week off of running so that he could yell at us for 40 mins and then tell us "you have 15 minutes to change and be back to the track or else you're off the indoor team."

We started with a 20 min run to warm up, on the indoor track... then we went outside.

Started out with a modified Michigan workout, I dropped the first mile in 4:53 taking first place, to which my coach called me a p***y. As I started what would have been a 2 mile tempo at ~6:00 pace, he called us off the track after 1.5 miles and told us to go to the bleachers, to which we ran up and down for 30 minutes. When he got bored of that, he made us go to the opposite side of the track and flip the big tires the football team usually used. Once everyone got through that 4 times, he made us run 400's until 4 people broke 60. Thankfully 6 of us did the first time around. Afterwards he had us stand in a circle and told us how much he cared. What a lovely day I hope he dies and rots in hell.

One time my high school coach made up a workout as we went along.

So we start off running a 400, right? There were 8 of us guys doing the workout, and we did a delayed the start, running in groups of 2. So basically, the 2 slowest guys would start, then a solid 10-15 seconds would go by, and the next 2 slowest guys would start, etc. And the idea was that we were all supposed to finish the 400 at the same time. So yes, the first 2 guys had to run somewhere between a relaxing 1:40 over 400, and the last 2 had to run like a 40 second 400. And this was the varsity group on a fairly decent high school team, so it's not like the slowest guys were 10-minute milers or something.

Then we took some time to recoup (or at least the guys attempting a world-record 400 did, some of us hadn't even done anything strenuous yet), and then coach had us do a lap of Indian running. Then another lap of weird delayed 400s. Then we did some jumping jacks or something. I am not joking in the slightest when I said he was making it up as we went along.

Rest between stuff was completely arbitrary as well. Anywhere between stopping for 2 seconds before going into the next interval and standing around for 4 minutes while coach tried to get together a game plan.

This was also one of our last workouts of the cross country season. Many of us were seniors.

In my late 20's, working a fairly intense full-time job, my running consisted of an almost daily 3-4 miler after work, in the neighborhood....something I had done off-and-on since college days. Almost always, each time I went out, I would try to equal or better my PB on that familiar course (while dodging traffic, stoplights, etc.).

I thought I knew a fair a bit about running by then; after-all, maybe I had even bought a book or two. In actuality, I hardly knew anything, never having raced competitively since a mediocre high school 'career'.

Then, I met a man that had briefly run for the UofOregon, back in the day (which didn't mean much to me at the time.) Well, this guy took my running to a whole new level, where we covered much longer distances. I got to where I looked forward to coming home after work and getting in my 7-miler. Again, I would blaze that thing practically every time I went out. Up until I blew out bout of my inner groins (muscles? tendons? I dunno, but it hurt to walk, and I quit running completely for several years after).

I wasn't into running competition at the time (thinking there was no point in racing to get beat by very fast people, after looking at 'pro' times). Looking back, my only regret about those early running days was not getting into a sanctioned race to see how fast I could run. My daily 7-milers on a hilly course were covered (IIRC) consistently at ~63 minutes.

*both (instead of bout)

yikes.....huge mistake in this story.

the latter runs were 9-milers (not 7-milers). These hilly 9-milers on urban streets were almost always covered in close to 63 minutes. I was addicted to the daily runners-high, and continued to run them even when injury started creeping up on me, right up to the point where it significantly hurt to walk.

They were nine ~7-minute miles, rather than seven 9-minute miles. Maybe a little demential is already creeping up on me. But over 25 years later, I can still remember that course, running out to San Diego State and back from 33rd St, and could probably plot it on google maps now to verify the distance.

20x60seconds hard on the roads with a 60s recovery.

Finished that and didn't feel like I'd done enough so went to the indoor track and did 3x200, 2x300, 400, 2x300, 3x200 @mile pace with 90s rest. Popped my calf on the last rep and missed a week.

Did this during a period of self-coaching and found out the hard way the tendency to overdo when you don't have a third party involved.

I couldn't break 4:30 in the mile so I found a big hill in my neighborhood and decided to run down it all-out. Measured it and chalked the splits. My legs were absolutely wrecked. 4 weeks to recover and fortunate it didn't lead to worse, but I at least got an unofficial road PR.

NahSon wrote:

Basically ran race pace for all workouts for a couple of months. Had nothing at races, times did not improve, and I burned out pretty quickly. Needed about two to three months of slow running to recover.

Yes. Been there. I was naive and encouraged by a coach that was impatient.

Anyone reading this thread, don't do this!

Summer '09 and I was preparing for a huge European mountain ultra (it had taken 35 hours the previous year), so I figured I should do some mega long runs.

One thing I do is get the train away from home then get off when I feel brave enough and run home. This time I went to the end of the line. It took me all day to get back the 67 miles. All flat too, so wasn't really beneficial for a mountain race. In the race itself a month later, I DNF'd.

Jan 95 ran 10K PR on hilly course, cold day, ran home four miles in rain (had gotten dropped off at start line). Next day was clear and cold, rode 75 miles after setting out to do 20 easy. Two days later shin splints started that turned into tibial stress fracture. Out till August.

2 miles on the track with a hangover, summer after HS. And, no, I didn't count the beers. A few of us had emptied a keg. The intent was to "run it off". That's when I learned I was the only one of us who lacked the puke gene - thank god.