Mine would be at ARkansas State university. It is on the second floor of the basketball arena and it is a circle, YES circle with about 10m of a straight away. the surface his like a VERY VERY hard rubber texture you would see in P.E. buildings
Mine would be at ARkansas State university. It is on the second floor of the basketball arena and it is a circle, YES circle with about 10m of a straight away. the surface his like a VERY VERY hard rubber texture you would see in P.E. buildings
The old Hec Edmondson Pavillion at Washington was strange, with the basketball court in the center of the track and the backstretch running under the stands and ductwork, with what seemed like only an inch or two clearance between your head and the vents.
Also notable was Kibbie Dome at Idaho, with a virtually square track. It was pretty weird when we got there early and didn't see the track. Then someone pushed a button and they rolled up the football field turf and the track was underneath.
I've run at ASU. That thing is a piece of shit. I thought I was going to die during a 3000m this year. On the other hand, Amy Acuff was there, so maybe that's why I had problems breathing.
The former Pitt fieldhouse had a track where the curves went under the bleachers. That's probably not uncommon though.
WHen I was in high school we ran "indoor" meets in a barn in South Park (Suburb of Pittsburgh). It was something weird like 3.5 laps for a quarter mile and the floor was dirt. I think it had a slight bank. This was in February and it was usually colder inside than outside.
In high school in Philly we'd run at West Chester State College...one turn was hidden under the stands so you ran through a tunnel...sometimes stuff happened in the tunnel...the lead would be altered drastically...just because someone went into the tunnel in first didn't mean they'd come out that way...in fact since this was Philly track the initial leader just might not come out at all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Agreed, West Chester's track is horrendous - but you forgot about the ship wheel that sticks out into lane one under the tunnel.. 10 laps to a mile, there's nothing really good about that track.
Swarthmore college also gets a nod - 3 lanes and lord knows how many laps to a mile, not to mention all the netting surrounding the inside. I went to HS nearby, and never saw any meets held there, and I really don't think they could.
forgot about the ship's wheel completely...whoa!
re: swarthmore...good fast facility in spite of the netting...does that still exist...we raced there many times in HS...the other one was "the barn" aka haverford...back then it was an indoor dirt track...site of my very first ever win (1000 yards in winter of 1975!)
oh man the college of technology @ Arlington....that track blows.... 11 5/8th laps to the mile. 5 lanes but 3 on the turns ....I saw of a teammate of mine (Miguel Pientzago 4:17 miler as a frosh) run a sickl 5:11 mile in there, the turns are tighter than my lies. It's an aweful track. I hope their invite gets cancelled this year.
AU!
Had a huge thread on this earlier:
http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&thread=107285&page=0
Yo the most unusual indoor track i've seen has to be the armory track in NYC. Those turns are mad tight, like my girlfriend's "you know what." And the striaght-a-ways are as looooooong as my homeboy's (Paco Roberto Samchez) "you know what." AU!
I never competed there, but Tufts' old indoor track was pretty wild. They use it as an extra track now. It goes underground (maybe even under the pools?), the turns are ridiculously tight and the 6th lane is about 2 inches from the wall the whole way around. My description can't do it justice... it's just so weird!
UNC-A it is like a square with mogals in the corners.
AZHeat wrote:
Agreed, West Chester's track is horrendous - but you forgot about the ship wheel that sticks out into lane one under the tunnel.. 10 laps to a mile, there's nothing really good about that track.
Swarthmore college also gets a nod - 3 lanes and lord knows how many laps to a mile, not to mention all the netting surrounding the inside. I went to HS nearby, and never saw any meets held there, and I really don't think they could.
Swarthmore's track is a little over 200 meters in length. There's weird markers all over it for different random events, like the 300y, 600y, and 1000y. If you went to HS nearby, I guess youre not still up to date with whats going on, because that is where they had county championships this year for the boys.
I've seen that old tufts track and ran a couple of laps up there. To me it looks like a boiler room that they just threw a track around. Its really weird.
In HS we used to practice in an armory which was basically a big garage. I forget how many laps to the mile. Dirty concrete floor and the occasional blast of arctic chill when they opened one of the big doors to left a truck in.
As far as REAL indoor tracks go, the oddest one I ran on was at the University of Rochester. Around 200 yards as I recall but one turn was pretty much squared off and literally went through a tunnel (not under bleachers, but another part of the building). There were lights in there and it was freaky being in lane 1 because you couldn't lean at all as there was a concrete wall about an inch from your face (or so it seemed). I never liked the banked wooden track in Syracuse's Manley fieldhouse, but for some reason it seemed "less weird". I much preferred U of R to it, but that tunnel was freaky. It was always neat to see how the positions changed from entry to exit. And as I recall, the sprinters started in the tunnel, which looked a little wierd too.
The St. Christopher's High School track in Richmond. The track itself is fairly standard, but the wild thing is how you finish many of the races. There is a massive garage door past one end of the straightaway that leads to a service lane outside. All of the sprints and some of the distance events use that door as the finish line. Which means it has to be open. Because the races are in the dead of winter, your lean for the tape takes you out into ice and snow just inches past the finish line. One year, there was so much snow outside that the sprinters all wrecked into a snowbank to slow themselves down before they hit the ice going downhill. Then they came back inside completely covered with snow to find out their times and places.
Reno has a banked WOOD elevated 200M track setup in a livestock arena. It smells like cow poop. I hate it.
Univeristy of Rochester (NY) takes the cake for most unusual. Half the track is inside a tunnel. (Brick walls and maybe an 8 ft high ceiling). Some of the races start inside the tunnel...talk about LOUD starter's pistols!!!!
I coached there for 4 years and it definitely is a messed up track. Not only does it shrink (in all three dimensions when you get in the tunnel) but most of the first lane is not as wide as the other lanes and the track is 207meters long making splits in distance races (especially the DMR) a real treat. And the tunnel section heats up nicely since it is near the heating units of the athletic complex. One could turn in decent times if you knew how to run it properly - basically stay in lane 2 and cut a tangent on the curves (which were more like corners) and swing out into the next straightaway.
whoops meant 2 dimensions - height and width. If the length did shrink, well then that would be even more unusual.