n9 wrote:
probably wrote:
First, 200m indoor, flat surfaced tracks for the most part
Holy cow! Flat 200 m indoor track? For the MOST part? That must have wrecked so many ankles. TBH I haven't seen a FLAT indoor track ever. Maybe a school gym where they jog around the perimeter of a basketball field. But not racing.[/quote]
Before the University of Washington built their current indoor track, the races were held in Hec Edmundsen pavilion, which had a 200m unbanked track. The only oversized indoor track in the northwest was the Kibbie Dome at the University of Idaho, which I believe was a 290m track. Everyone thought the times that were run should have an asterisk next to them because it was so much faster.
My favorite was the one at Eastern Washington University (another 200m unbanked track); I remember it having a low ceiling, and people used to smoke indoors at the time. The air quality was awful by the end of the meet. I remember watching Josephat Kapkory win an atrociously slow mile race in something like 4:10 after going out around 2:00 at the 800 and dying hard. He looked like he was hit by a bus when he finished. A few weeks later he won NCAA 3000m in around 7:50.