DUMBEST workout you’ve done

Any lactic threshold run. Stupid and pointless.

I was in 30:5x 10k shape while in college and had the potential to get better.....then I did a stupid workout that gave me tendonitis that I have not been able to get over for the last 6-7 years. Now days I cannot get over 40 miles a week without the injury flaring up. Here are the two stupid workouts I did that got me a permanent stay in hobby joggerville. Both were performed a week apart.

Workout 1:

20 miles- first 10 miles in about 61 minutes, second 10 miles in 55 minutes so...20 miles in 1 hour, 56 minutes.

Workout 2:

8 miles at 5:45 pace then 2x 2 miles in 9:5x

Eventually I recovered to an extent and then....thinking less mileage and higher quality workouts is better I averaged 40-50 miles per week and then ran this workout:

4 miles at 5:05 pace with 1/2 mile jog, 3 miles at 5:05 pace with 1/2 mile jog, 1 mile sub 5:00 pace. Then the injury flared up again.

Word of advice. If you ever want to see your potential as a runner, just because you can do a workout does not mean that you should do a workout. I traded years of potential improvement for a season of PRs. Not worth it. Learn from stupid does.

Love,

Fat Hobby Jogger.

Was after I graduated, but my team did 1k repeats until failure. I think the top runner(s) got to 16? They had to be done at a decent pace before dropping out. 16k isn’t THAT much speedwork, but the concept of reps till failure is sketchy.

I had a friend that said his team literally ran an all-out 5k every day in training for cross country. The coach's logic was "to get better at 5ks, you need to do 5ks." Their only warm up and cool down was jogging to and from their 5k practice route, which was only 400m away. My friend had a long serious talk with the coach one day after practice about "adding more variety" to the training. The coach said he'd sleep on it. The next day at practice, the coach told the team they'd do the 5k but in the opposite direction and gave my friend a wink and a thumbs up.

robert678 wrote:

I had a friend that said his team literally ran an all-out 5k every day in training for cross country. The coach's logic was "to get better at 5ks, you need to do 5ks." Their only warm up and cool down was jogging to and from their 5k practice route, which was only 400m away. My friend had a long serious talk with the coach one day after practice about "adding more variety" to the training. The coach said he'd sleep on it. The next day at practice, the coach told the team they'd do the 5k but in the opposite direction and gave my friend a wink and a thumbs up.

lmfao omg

Also this: not the workouts themselves, but I once had a coach who prescribed the same cool down after every track workout: 2 laps jogging in the opposite direction.

My coach sent me a workout to do by text: 15*60s @1k pace / 90s jog, and I did it, hammering out 12 1 minute intervals at a pace I could only hold for 2:42ish before my calves became absolute rocks and I had to walk 2 kilometres to my house.

Only when I got home I realized that he had made a typo, it was supposed to be a very easy workout at 10k pace. I was in my first year of track, and was just following orders...

25x100 all out sprints w/ walk recovery and then an all out mile. i did this in the same day after a race.

Still one of the dumbest workouts I've ever been asked to do. After about one of these every 3 weeks you'd get pretty fit, starts off reasonable but then quickly becomes trash. After a warmup you roll into 5 minutes at marathon pace, the next 5 at half pace, the next 5 at 10k pace, the next 5 at 5k pace and then you work backwards. So you'd run 20 minutes straight at 10k pace or faster in a row with no prescribed rest. We'd still take a short rest as the coach could not run with the top group and thus wouldn't know but we also sandbagged the workout usually. Even a dummy would know not to run at that effort for that long.

My coach makes us run an 800 meter time trial every fall. Not distance runners - sprinters, jumpers, hurdlers, vaulters.

XC season we did some 800's a week or so before regionals. Me and my teammate who happened decided to race the last couple reps, which resulted in both of us running back to back all-out 800's, in 30°F weather. fcked up my hamstrings pretty bad.

No surprise we both bombed at regionals the following week.

26.5 miles with 8,000 ft of elevation gain...….on a treadmill.

Juice Springsteen wrote:

Also this: not the workouts themselves, but I once had a coach who prescribed the same cool down after every track workout: 2 laps jogging in the opposite direction.

What's so bad about this? 2 lap cooldown, depending on age/experience isn't so dumb.

I had a workout, 20x400, didn't think it'd be too bad. Get to 20, coach says another 20. Do that, feeling rough but still running. Get to 40, coach says another 20. Last 15 I wasn't even running a decent pace, not sure of the point of that.

Couldn't walk or run for two days, took me many more to recover.

robert678 wrote:

I had a friend that said his team literally ran an all-out 5k every day in training for cross country. The coach's logic was "to get better at 5ks, you need to do 5ks." Their only warm up and cool down was jogging to and from their 5k practice route, which was only 400m away. My friend had a long serious talk with the coach one day after practice about "adding more variety" to the training. The coach said he'd sleep on it. The next day at practice, the coach told the team they'd do the 5k but in the opposite direction and gave my friend a wink and a thumbs up.

That coach is an all-time hall of fame troll.

Mile repeats on a trail with a few roots and trip hazards. There was a mile long, seemingly perfect section of trail. The 4th or 5th time I did this workout, I twisted my foot over a root, breaking 2 toes in 3 places and getting a jones fracture in my 5th toe as well. I didn't run again for 17 weeks.

In my first year at university (uk) I was essentially self coached and spent the first semester in the library reading all the old Lydiard books. In the January /February I won a national indoor title on a Sunday afternoon and, full of enthusiasm launched into the full Lydiard base schedule the next morning, complete with second daily sessions of 1 hour jogs. By the end of the first week i had run well over 100 miles (normally ~50) and was suffering insomnia and extreme muscle soreness. I stuck to the schedule for another week before my body gave up on me. So tired I could barely walk, swollen glands and body covered in a rash. Was about 3 week before I could even think about running again. Not all bad though - in the summer was flying!

This is hilarious.

4x800 in 2:50-3:00 in high school with 3 minutes rest.

Slowest guy in our top 10 was a 16:30 3 miler. Finished the workout feeling like we had just finished the warmup.

The night before a meet, the football coach who was coaching distance track made us do an all out 1500, 800, and 400. Then when we didn't PR in both the time trial and the race the next day, he got angry with us.