I went to high school in California in the early 80s. I didn't realize how cool that was at the time, but we ran on a wide variety of surfaces and levels of maintenance:
Horrible dirt tracks with rocks of various sizes,
Well maintained dirt tracks,
Well maintained cinder tracks,
Hard, pain cheap or worn out rubberized tracks,
Hard, fast asphalt tracks.
Looking back, I actually enjoyed the variety. It was kind of like cross country back then. No two courses or tracks were exactly alike.
My HS track was a well maintained cinder track. Real crushed cinders, not combed dirt like many tracks of the day. It was fairly fast, not the fastest track, but respectably fast for a cinder track. One local college track that we raced on often was rubberized 3M tartan, which was a great, fast track at the time. I ran a quite a few PRs on that tartan track.
San Diego, early 1990s: our track was hard packed dirt. The coaches would put down crisp chalk lanes on day of the the track meet. If there was heavy rain, the meet would be cancelled due to mud. Only the "rich" schools in the area (suburban school districts) had rubberized tracks. So we constantly had to change out our spikes; if I recall correctly we used long spikes for the dirt track, and shorter spikes for the rubberized tracks (to avoid damaging them). It was always a challenge to screw and unscrew those things. They would always get "stripped" and stuck in the shoe.
By the mid-1990s, they started redoing the tracks at the city schools; nowadays I think they are all rubberized.
I graduated from high school in 1970. All the tracks were cinders and we never ran in anything but spikes. We also never trained away from the track. In college all but two tracks I was on were cinder. Most of the rest were "asphalt composition," asphalt mixed with ground up tires making the track a bit softer than a stretch of road...supposedly. In cold weather there was nothing soft about them. We used short spikes, an eighth of an inch on those tracks.
As you say” we also never trained away from the track. “ So true- not until I read “ The Jim Ryun story”-(great book)did I realize you had to get out on roads to gain endurance. But on the track we always did the standard workout 10 quarters in 68 -70 sec with 1 min. recovery.
Tom Osler told me that one of the most revolutionary ideas he got from Lydiard was that you could run on roads and sidewalks and not just on tracks.
Speaking of old tracks. Who remembers running on the old Armory track in upper Manhattan. Think it was 200 macadam track with cots for homeless who slept there at night. Place had an unusual smell. Although most fieldhouses in those ads did. Poor ventilation in those old venues
Sure. I ran the MAC champs there probably early 80s. my recollection it was running on flat wooden floor. The turns were not banked. We should all thank Norb Sanders for resurrecting the Armory.
In 1974 at William Patterson in Wayne, New Jersey we had a 440 asphalt track around the football field. I ran the mile and three mile in marathon racing sneakers. Was like a road race.
Ryun broke the 880yds WR in 1966 on a 'synthetic' track. May not be the same as the synthetic tracks we think of now, but it is listed in the IAAF Progression of Word Records book as being the first WR set on a synthetic track.
I went to Jamaica HS in Queens, NY and graduated in 1972. We were near St. John's U and for a few years there was a program at St. John's in June (after our season was over) where we could get exposed to college coaching, other events, etc. For example, they would have the triple jump for distance runners or the 100 for shot putters or oddball events like 500y or 660y.
The coaches were Steve Bartold and Joe Lang and some of the guys on the St. John's team. Some of the guys on the team included Richie Torrellas (team manager turned hammer thrower), and 2 distance guys named George Leidinger and Darryl whose last name I can't remember.
The track was something called Grasstex. It was kind of hard and black. I don't know if it had any asphalt in it. It was possible to wear spikes on it but we were not allowed to wear spikes on it. It was showing signs of wear and tear with big (maybe 1 foot by 1 foot) bare patches where the surface had gotten ripped apart. I loved the program but hated the track surface!
That's the track where Renaldo Nehemiah broke the HS record for the 120y high hurdles.
I know that a lot of the tracks we ran in college were Grasstex. They felt like the asphalt composition ones, i.e., pretty hard in cold weather and a wee bit less as the temperature rose. The difference I recall was color. The tracks that were called asphalt composition were always black. The Grasstex were some lighter color, maybe green and the texture seemed different as I recall. I can't find any information about what they were made of.
My HS track years were 1970-1973, in smaller HS in suburbs north of Boston. Most tracks were cinders, with various quality of care, and all were slop in bad weather. As noted by at least one other here, high speed falls were rough even without being punctured with 3/4 in. spikes.
There were a few all weather tracks, mostly made with a high rubber content, but harder than rubber, known to us as rubcor. They were typically black in color, somewhat bouncy, but reasonably firm and faster than cinders or dirt. The big advantage was they handled rain well. One school had a harder surface track, light grey, not as bouncy but 1/4 in. spikes were usable but hardly needed in distances.
Another school had a dirt track with a high sand content. I appreciated how bad a running track it was when an errant discus during warmup hit me on a bounce a few in. below my knee; my injury was quite minor.
I then went to a small college in southern California. Dirt with a high clay content was common. They were OK, if not real fast, if well groomed, which included proper watering. About 35 years later I did a soccer referee fitness test on a HS track in the area with similar composition, about one month after the HS season ended. The inner lanes were still run into dirt, the outer ones were full of hard ruts.
HS indoor seasons, distance guys trained on roads only, except for the rare rainy day near freezing. Our league had no indoor tracks, we used the Phillips Academy Andover facility. The 2-mile was run on the highly banked 152 yard wooden track with a rounded off square shape. Shorter distances were run on dirt downstairs. This indoor track design was not uncommon in NE USA at one time, and is a subject of an LRC board thread some years ago.
I went to Jamaica HS in Queens, NY and graduated in 1972. We were near St. John's U and for a few years there was a program at St. John's in June (after our season was over) where we could get exposed to college coaching, other events, etc. For example, they would have the triple jump for distance runners or the 100 for shot putters or oddball events like 500y or 660y.
The coaches were Steve Bartold and Joe Lang and some of the guys on the St. John's team. Some of the guys on the team included Richie Torrellas (team manager turned hammer thrower), and 2 distance guys named George Leidinger and Darryl whose last name I can't remember.
The track was something called Grasstex. It was kind of hard and black. I don't know if it had any asphalt in it. It was possible to wear spikes on it but we were not allowed to wear spikes on it. It was showing signs of wear and tear with big (maybe 1 foot by 1 foot) bare patches where the surface had gotten ripped apart. I loved the program but hated the track surface!
That's the track where Renaldo Nehemiah broke the HS record for the 120y high hurdles.
You were there in the Golden Age of NYC track and field. Not so much anymore and it's sad.
In the early 2000s, my middle school races tended to be on asphalt tracks unless the hosting school was close to or associated with a high school. High school races (2003 onwards) were all on rubberized tracks. Some asphalt tracks I ran on still seem to be asphalt today, if my reading of Google Maps satellite view and Street View is accurate.
The track on Martha's Vineyard - while in deplorable condition - is not asphalt. It has a rubberized spray coat over an asphalt base that is well past it's prime. This post brings to light an 8+ year old fight with the community to replace the track and add a turf field. The turf field became a battle ground and replacing the track was pushed aside. Meanwhile the track athletes were held hostage and still train on a track that should have been replaced over decade ago. The project is now dead and we must start from square 1.
FYI - year round residents are from the rich or famous.
The track on Martha's Vineyard - while in deplorable condition - is not asphalt. It has a rubberized spray coat over an asphalt base that is well past it's prime. This post brings to light an 8+ year old fight with the community to replace the track and add a turf field. The turf field became a battle ground and replacing the track was pushed aside. Meanwhile the track athletes were held hostage and still train on a track that should have been replaced over decade ago. The project is now dead and we must start from square 1.
FYI - year round residents are from the rich or famous.
A similar thing happened in my hometown. The school board authorized capital improvements to the football stadium and track. The field was graded and the asphalt was laid for the track.
However, a dispute arose within the community, which escalated to the school board, over whether to stay with natural grass or install artificial turf.
The jv and varsity boys and girls soccer teams insisted on playing home games at the renovated football stadium despite having ten well maintained full size soccer fields within the district equipped with bleachers, covered benches, and digital scoreboards, etc. The football stadium grass could not withstand both football and soccer games. (I could honestly never understand why the soccer teams were so insistent on playing at the football stadium. Although the field was still [barely] regulation size for high school soccer, the track and stadium significantly constrained the field making it smaller than the ten other fields the soccer teams could use, and the stadium could not accommodate covered benches for the soccer teams. The stadium was also significantly father from the soccer team locker rooms.)
The project stalled for over three years while the dispute got sorted out, and the high school was without a regulation track for four years.
Ultimately artificial turf was installed and each soccer team gets to play at least a homecoming week home game on the stadium field.
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