Hello Runners! This is my first attempt at a contest, and I have a few more up my sleeve, so please consider participating as a way of building our Steemit running community.

Post your favorite workout (or least favorite, depending on how you look at it) for a chance to win!

1st Place: 5 SBD 🥇
2nd Place: 3 SBD 🥈
3rd Place: 1SBD 🥉

Be sure to check out @runningproject if you haven't already!

Your chance to unleash that competitive spirit!

Image source: Pexels

The Rules:

There are none

Alright, maybe a few:

1. You have to write up your workout as a post and drop a link in the comments here.
2. You do not have to upvote or resteem this post, but seriously?! :) This is about building community so please help spread the word in whatever way you can.
3. Your submission has to be specifically about running/race training and cannot be about cross training or any other thing you do that you try to rationalize as part of your training (i.e.hanging out in the pub consuming "recovery drinks.")
4. But then again feel free to include such sordid details in your post.
5. Post your submission by this Sunday at midnight UT so I have time to read them and do a follow up post so you can get some upvotes before the payout period ends.

Details that might boost your chances of winning:

1. Include some science behind the workout; explain why it is a good workout for a certain end goal. The more specific the better.
2. Be upfront about how you learned about this workout, or if it's your own creation, tell us something about how it came to be.
3. Humor is always nice, but not required.
4. Include a good story about doing the workout. The best workouts make your eyes bleed, so I want to feel that! For example . . .

Here are some professional references for inspiration:

If you call yourself a runner then you certainly have read Once a Runner by John Parker Jr. (If you haven't read it, follow the link and buy it right now and then come back. The book is a classic, and comes with its own bit of running culture folklore. Word in the cross country and track world is that Parker had a hard time getting the book published and sold, but then it became a cult classic among high school kids, and today magazines like Runner's World, Running Times and Sports Illustrated Magazine have heaped on praise. It is the story of a collegiate runner named Quentin Cassidy who is on a quest to run a 4:00 mile and become the best miler in the world. There is an entire chapter, perhaps the best in the book, that describes a single workout Cassidy completes. I won't give any spoilers but it is gut wrenching. There is a later chapter that describes a single race, and that one is perhaps the best reason to read the book.

Another example is from a book that I believe is equally good, but more obscure, Chasing Ghosts, by Phillip J Reilly. In this required reading for runners, Reilly tells the story of a post collegiate runner who dusts off the spikes to make a go at the Olympic Trials. Reilly, no doubt inspired by Once a Runner, has his own version of the entire chapter about a single workout. This chapter describes the workout coined Ghost Chaser Relay and it actually inspired a variation that has become one of my favorite ways of tricking high school kids into running really hard. Again, no spoilers, because I know you're going to go buy this one too :).

And finally, if that isn't enough to get you started, here is a sample by me:

My Favorite Killer Track Workout, by Coach Craig

I am a sprinter by trade, and although I have raced in just about every distance from 55 meters to marathon, my favorite distance as a masters athlete is still the 400. The 400 requires raw speed, but also expanding the engine through longer speed endurance workouts. My second favorite race is the 800, and the workout I am sharing here is technically for middle distance, but it has obvious benefits for long sprinters and distance runners alike. I don't know if I would bother doing this if I was training for anything over an 8k, but with that in mind, this is also an excellent workout for increasing speed in the shorter road races. I ran personal bests in the 400, 800, 5k and 10 mile all in the same year that I was nailing this workout to the wall like a dead rat.

The science behind this is that in the 400, 800, mile, and even a longer race when one is really charging a new personal best, requires one to maintain speed under high levels of oxygen deprivation. The 400 and 800 are oxygen negative races, which means you literally cannot absorb enough oxygen through the lungs to make it to the finish without falling to pieces. So this workout expands the length of time that you can run before hitting total deprivation. However, to what extent that is really possible, the next benefit is probably more important. This is seriously the hardest workout I have every done. The length of time it requires (about 30 minutes) and the way it unfolds is a serious mind-screw. So we can say that what we are really training in this workout is out mental capacity for pain.

A book that really helped me understand this is Alberto Salazar's 14 Minutes: A Running Legend's Life and Death and Life. Salazar writes quite a bit about the fact that everyone who shows up to a big race is in the best shape of their lives, and often running at the same paces in workouts, and the difference on race day is simply who has the better ability to push harder when the brain tells them to stop. That requires actually altering the wiring of the brain, and that is exactly what this workout will do.

Details:
5 sets of 3x200 meters.
Each set is faster than the previous one, while the rests get shorter.
You can set a specific pace for each set, or rep. Here is one variation I have done:

1. 3x200 @ 36, 2:00 rest after each
2. 3x200 @ 34, 1:45 rest
3. @ 32, 1:30 rest
4. @ 30, 1:15 rest
   5 @ 28, 1:00 rest
   I have also done this variation:
5. 3x200 @ 44, 43, 42, 2:00 rests
6. @ 41, 40, 39, 1:45 rests
7. @ 38, 37, 36, 1:30 rests
8. @ 35, 34, 33, 1:15 rests
9. @ 32, 31, 30, 1:00 rests
   (Start faster to end faster)

The story:
I learned about this workout from my good friend and teammate, Delvin Dinkins. Delvin coached high school track for 20 years, and now in his later 40s he still runs around 16:00 in the 5k as well as a 54 second 400. He has a very personal connection to torture, both of himself and others!

The first time I tried this workout I went to the track by myself. That was a mistake. I got through 3 sets and quit. I knew I would have to start with a slower pace, but I could also tell this was a workout that you had to practice. I did it again a couple weeks later with some very fit varsity track boys, and no one made it past the 4th set. The next time I tried the workout I enlisted a club teammate that I did a lot of training with. We were going to do our last hard workout two weeks before Masters Indoor Nationals in Landover, Maryland.

It was a mild, sunny, Saturday morning. Perfect speed weather. Bruce and I began the first set of 200s at 36 seconds and bounced a little above and below that for the first three reps. If we ran too fast on one we compensated by doing the next one a little slower. I realize in my previous attempts that this was essential to getting through the workout. The first set always seems too easy, but I knew on the third try that this was the time to think about technique and conserve as much energy as possible. Knowing what was coming, I told Bruce to really focus during the rests, to get as much recovery as possible even though the two minutes seemed like overkill. The second set started to feel like work by the last rep, but still totally manageable. Remember what I said about this being brain training -- somewhere in the third set I began to feel a slight creep of what I would call concern. My heartrate was still not back to baseline by the next rep, and I could tell my legs were getting a little fatigued.

As we finished the fourth set, that slow creeping concern became legitimate fear. How did the rests suddenly seem so short? Oh, right, they are! Suddenly we are off again, able to chip away another two seconds on the rep, but gasping for air at the end. Waiting for the second to last rep I realized that my buddy was lying on the ground. He managed to say, "Can't. Done. You go," or something like that through pathetic gasps. Without thinking (there was literally no time to do so) I grabbed him by the back of the shirt and drug him to the line. He stood up just in time to start again. The time on the rep dropped significantly, but I could tell that was now irrelevant. This is purely about effort. This time it was me that fell to the ground. I was toast, and nothing was going to get me to choke out another rep. I figured Bruce was done as well. Oh well, we came close. There was no doubt we got our work in. And then suddenly I was being dragged back to the line this time by Bruce! He was screaming at me. I looked at my watch -- 58, 59. And then we were somehow running. I have no idea what our time was on that last rep. It was probably the single worst half a minute of my life, if I could actually remember it.

But I do remember, quite clearly, running a new masters personal best in the 400 the next time I stepped on the track! I placed eighth overall in the 40-44 year old age group at Indoor Nationals. 55.66!.

There you go. Get writin'

Good luck!

I reserve the right to choose the winners based on my own subjective opinion

If you haven't yet, join The Steemit Running Project. Thanks to @toofasteddie for his work on The Running Project.

If you would like to start running, or are an experienced runner planning your next 5k, join @runningproject's 5k Training Porgram.

If you think you might like to make money every time you do a workout . . . nah, forget it, no one would want that! Okay, fine -- check out #runforsteem by @jumowa. Click here: Weekly Run for Steem Challenge Feb 26th - Mar 5th & Payout For Last Week

My inspiration to do a running-related contest, and the fact that I have some SBD to spend, came via @trevor.george, and his totally awesome, wacky and fun Steemit Ultra Marathon. You just have to do this contest to believe it. It actually made me really want to do a trail ultra, IN NEW ZEALAND, which is just insane.

About Coach Craig:

I am an avid running and coach. I have competed in every distance from 55 meters to iron distance triathlon, including a handful of marathons. As a masters athlete I focus on the 5K (masters pr of 19:40), 800 meters (2:12) and 400 meters (55.2), but I also run the Philadelphia Broad Street 10 miler every spring with my wife (1:16). I am not a fast distance runner, but partly because I am a sprinter at heart. I currently coach sprints at my local high school, and help my wife with her cross country team in the fall, as well as the winter track program at her school. I am also the vice president of Greater Philadelphia Track Club, the president of a youth track and field club that my wife and I started last summer, and hold a USA Track & Field level 1 certification. I have done extensive technique training and coaching, and attend two coaching conferences every year to keep up with the latest ideas. This summer I will be completing my USATF level 2 certification, most likely with a concentration in youth track and field.