Who has the worst indoor track?

pretb23 wrote:

VMI

That track has to be in the top 5 or 10. How many times have two guys gone under the seats together and come out 10 meters apart? The banking is completely worthless. It's like a skateboard ramp.

The Ashe Center in Richmond, VA is pretty bad, too.

What's an indoor track ? Is this a Naruto anime thing or a silly joke ? Never heard of running indoors. I'm a junior in high school in Fullerton, CA, and admit I need to learn more about running.

There's a high school over here in Wisconsin that has an "indoor track" that's 166 meters and made out of plastic. No spikes aloud, and in the sprints the winner is the one who doesn't go down on the turn.

I ran a meet there in high school and loved it so much that I went to college there. The long sprints (280 and 400) were deadly races when you were worrying about someone passing you and forgot about the posts.

Running the corners felt a bit like running through a ditch

Haha, I can't even imagine racing on that track, much less even warming up on it for a meet. Those posts are insanely low around the corners. Props to you guys for running there (and actually enjoying it).

Has anyone ever ran at Arkansas State? Thats a joke, basically a wrestling mat surface around the upper level seating in a basketball gym. Tore my legs up in a 3K

I raced an indoor mile at Appalachain State once and that was a strange track. It was actually 300 meters and had a fast surface, but it was very oddly shaped. It had 8 straights, because it was shaped like an octagon. And the track went around the outside of the basketball arena so you could only see portions of the track that were directly in front of you at any given moment. And if you were a spectator, you could only see the race for a couple seconds each lap as they passed by. Then they were out of sight for another 45-50 seconds.

cgunner wrote:

The worst track I have ever run on and i am sure other people from Maryland would agree, would be the Baltimore Armory's track. It is like running on black ice.

those were the days! running a 2 mile on that thing was hell. I always wondered why guys like The Wheelers could only manage a 4:20 or something on that. I found out...

As far as oversized tracks go (240m?), I'd have to put forward the University of South Carolina. Three very narrow lanes (you can only fit two hurdles on it) and SQUARE. We'd always hold one indoor meet on it, and the most entertaining event was the 400m, where someone would always take a turn too long and slam into the walls (once you got off the track it was just a few feet of concrete and then the fieldhouse walls.) Luckily, I never raced that meet.

BU. honestly. that track feels like they poured hard rubber on top of a waterbed.

Dickinson's isn't horrible, but it's pretty crappy. It goes around the basketball courts on the floor of the field house, and it's the same hard rubber surface they use for those kind of facilities, just a different color with lane lines. It was a full 200m, which was nice, but doing 4-5 mile tempo runs when the outdoor track was covered in snow was pretty brutal.

[quote]cassio598 wrote:

Dickinson's isn't horrible, but it's pretty crappy. It goes around the basketball courts on the floor of the field house, and it's the same hard rubber surface they use for those kind of facilities, just a different color with lane lines. It was a full 200m, which was nice, but doing 4-5 mile tempo runs when the outdoor track was covered in snow was pretty brutal.[/quote

Why would you do 4-5 mile repeats on an indoor track? that makes no sense. Go outside. Modify the workout. you don't need a track to do a tempo run. do it on the road.

However, I've been on that track. It's ok... there are worse...

There are those that don't have indoor tracks. Though, I firmly believe that distance runners do not need an indoor track to train. It'd be a convinent place to do strides, but that's about it. You can modify every speedwork for the road, and save youself from doing all those turns. It really effects sprinters and jumpers more. No place to practice blocks, hand-offs, get steps, actually jump.

no one has put up the university of portland? the octagon? thunder dome? Home of the Chiles Mile?

-Feels like you're breathing dusty glass.

-Precarious stairwells that protrude at four different corners lest the runner on the inside try to cut a tangent at the wrong time.

-rubberish surface surface that slips in some places.

- You can expect to run at least 4-5 seconds slower than your PR on the best day of your life for the mile 20 seconds for the 3k.

Ohio wrote:

Probably not the worst, but Ohio State has a pretty shitty indoor track. I'm not sure the last time it was redone, the '70s? I was warming up there last year and tripped on a dip on the back straight. Heating vents above make the straights alternate between wintry and tropical. At least it's a full 200m, though.

I loved that track when I ran on it in 1981.

Central Suburban League wrote:

I would have to go with Niles East.

wow, very old school! Never ran there (because it doesnt exist anymore), so i will have to say Highland Park. The place is basically a dungeon, the track is actually uneven, and the turns are so tight that you almost run into the support pillars

University of Portland

2 Lanes

240m flat

roughly octagon shaped, this track has corners, not turns... And the longest straight is about 30 meters. Plus im pretty sure there is someone in the air that makes it feel like your lungs are bleeding after a race.

Dirt wrote:

Slippery Rock. Some people have vanished in the turns behind those stands and walls and have never been seen again...

The Rock gets my vote too. That track sucks. Last time I raced on it that bald little shite Jason Bodnar was running for Pitt and hot dogging it. Running in Hawaian shorts and surging for 2 laps after leeching off me for most of the race. I ran him into the ground the last lap and his team mates told me how pleased they were that I knocked the midget down a few pegs.

Having lived and run all over the country, I've been on a lot of these tracks. Lehigh U. and Highland Park HS, IL aren't bad because you can use spikes. LVC isn't that bad either. Highland Park is a dungeon -- It is unbelievable where they throw the shot and PV -- but I've always thought it was an imaginaive use of space. Having gone to high school in the 70's in Baltimore, nothing is worse then the Baltimore Armory. I recently saw some pictures from a meet there recently and I was actually impressed that it is now clean, although I can't believe they are still using it for track meets. In the 70's it was dirty and every time you took a step your foot would slip. I ran my most miserable two mile race ever in the Armory. I didn't even get to finish because the rules were that when you got lapped you had to drop out. A guy by the name of Neil Brown from Towson High School lapped me with a half mile to go and a miserable experience ended. I didn't even get a time.

Morton East HS in Cicero had an astroturf indoor track without any lanes, just a worn circular path that needed to be followed. On top of that, the track had a big fold, like a crunched-up bathroom rug, and the fold had to be carefully negotiated. I ran a 10:00 2-mile on it once, which today seems humanly impossible.