What exactly were Cinder Tracks like?

Watch Without Limits for a good sense of racing on cinders.

Ran and raced on a dirt/sand track at the Presidio of Monterey.

Made

hoo-ah wrote:

Ran and raced on a dirt/sand track at the Presidio of Monterey.

Made

less than $15k/year but had a (multi)million dollar view. One of the highest points in Monterey, with a view of the bay on three sides.

My local HS track was cinder until a few years ago (now it's low-budget compound). Woe betide the finicky if the day was damp: stuff stained clothing something fierce. Oh, and it sucked if'n you tripped: had to pick out the bits. (Coal? Who knows: it was black, grimy, and granular though.)

I ran on them in HS and College from 1975 through 1979. For me the biggest difference is you had to wear ¾ inch spikes and I did not like the feel and I had a real fear of being spiked, which, thankfully, never happened.

They definitely had a distinctive crunching sound. That was unique to each track. Of the two tracks I remember, one had older, bigger cinders, and the other newer and finer. Very different sounds and feel.

It seemed and I had thought they were automatically slower than modern tracks but I raced on both in college and my times were pretty close. I had consistent times in the 5000 during the spring of 1979. On 3 consecutive weeks I went 15:45 cinder, 15:42 modern, and 15:47 cinder.

Ah, cinder tracks!

I still have strong memories (some terror inducing!) of leading an 880, and with 120yds to go, and hearing the sound of spikes, on cinders, over my left shoulder. Yikes!

Good stuff...

...should've said, right shoulder.

Ha!

Ran sprints on cinder tracks in Philly area in the 60's including the Penn Relays, Villanova stadium, St. Joe's, Temple, high school fields.

Lane 1 anywhere was always the slowest, got to be like beach sand chewed up from distance runners hugging the rail, while the middle/outside lanes were faster (firmer). A soaking rain before a meet made every lane slow. But the track was at it's best (hard & firm) about a day after the water dried but only if it was rolled/packed and dragged. Lane chalk sorta disappeared later in meets, but you could still make it out at speed.

Sprint relay takeoff marks for legs 2-3-4 were usually counted off and scrapped into the lane.

Sometimes we didn't have blocks and dug little holes with our long spikes at the starting line. Flats were useless for meets, fine for training. And I recall that shin splints were less common on cinders.

Planted my face/chest, arms/legs on a finish line lean a number of times, not fun. Ya skim a short bit, bleed, then pick the gravel out.

I recall seeing cinders kicked up and still airborne about 10 yards behind an old school flash named Bill "Peanut" Gaines in a 100 once, needless to say I wasn't in that final.

LJ, TJ, and HJ runways and approach were of the same cinder surface.

Last cinder track I ran on was at Quantico Marine Base in VA, home of the old Quantico Relays, but believe they resurfaced that now. Priority was $ for trainin ammo over sports.

This also takes me back to those old wooden indoor board tracks with the steep, high banked turns. Some were 12-14 laps per mile. Now that was a contact sport, and the chewed up wood splinters were worse than cinders on a fall, ending up like a porcupine. Or you'd catch a short spike and launch off the outside lane on the banked turn and end up landing in the 3rd-4th row of seats.

Good memories, though my best time in the 100 now is "Tuesday".

I can confirm. In HS in the bay area my track was clay. Lots of dust when the tractor would smooth it out. Always still had small divots in places no matter what. I would wear spikes and it was hard as hell on the legs and a very definate crunching noise.

There are still some around if you look hard enough. My track has two opponents that still have them.

If you have ever run on a crushed limestone trail then you know what it feels and sounds like. Some were better than others. Mine had pits and holes

Usually after any significant rain, you were not allowed on the track.

There is one (well, as of 5y ago or so there was anyway) at Mattituck HS on the North Fork of Long Island. It was a nice surface to run on. wouldn't have wanted to race on it, but it was nice enough.

Had this saved for some reason. They have a current website for more info.

Topsoil Red Cinders Sand Gravel

360-886-2841 425-432-4700

Landscape Supplies U-Haul or We Deliver

RED CINDERS

WHAT ARE THEY?

Red Cinders are the shale, sandstone, clay and siltstone, fired red by the intense heat from burning in old coal slag piles. We screen and crush red cinders into two primary sizes: 3/4” red cinders and 1/4” red cinders. Both products weigh approximately one ton to the cubic yard, but can very with the season. The 3/4” or coarse red cinders is used primarily for driveways and decorative landscaping. The 1/4” or fine red cinders is used primarily for walking paths and running tracks. We also carry 3/8" red cinder chips, a 1”-3” cinder rock, larger clinker boulders and other lightweight cinder products for specialty fill jobs. All products are available on a U-haul or we deliver basis.

WHERE DO THEY COME FROM?

The story of red cinders began over a century ago when miners came to Black Diamond in search of coal. They found millions of tons of the black colored “diamonds” needed by the growing cities of Seattle and San Francisco. In the early days, the miners sought only the purest coal of highest quality and discarded everything else. Unfortunately, the coal seams were not pure, but contained veins of lower quality coal, shale, sandstone, clays and other minerals. These other materials were often referred to as slag. From the underground mines, small rail cars brought the coal and slag to the surface. There, the outside miners separated the good clean coal from the lower quality coal and slag. The top quality coal was sold while the waste slag was dumped in large piles adjacent to the mine portal. Through a process known as spontaneous combustion, the piles caught fire and burned for years. Once burning, the slag was nearly impossible to extinguish and the piles smoldered for years at temperatures exceeding 2,000° F. The intense heat from the burning of coal fused the shale, sandstone, clay, and silt together while iron pyrites found in the famous McKay coal seam caused the burned slag to turn red. This giant “oven” has been compared to the brick-making process so our red cinders often are referred to as “nature’s brick”.

The circumstances which led to the creation of red cinders will almost certainly never be repeated. Today, all the mined coal is valuable, hence very little burnable coal is discarded with the slag. Strict mining laws prohibit the creation of large waste piles in order to prevent the spontaneous combustion of slag. The red color was provided by a special bed of coal known as the McKay and this seam has been fairly well depleted. The red cinders we have today, though a wonder to behold and a great landscaping material, will last many more years but will eventually be exhausted. Our durable red cinder rock has a unique history, yet has found a second life in running tracks, driveways, flower beds and landscapes throughout the Puget Sound area.

Ran, hurdled, long jumped and high jumped all on a cinder track in HS (1970-74).

If you fell, you would definitely come up with a bruise + cinders embedded under your skin. There was even a product for that called "Cinder Suds" to help wash out the cinders. If that wasn't bad enough, we high jumped into bags of sawdust!! No foam rubber mats in those days. Some of the schools had large netted bags with pieces of foam rubber. Most of the time you would land on the bag then roll off between them and hit the hard ground.

Lot of great comments/memories here. Nothing to add except the last time I ran on a cinder track was in 2010--the Brocton Oval in Stanley Park, Vancouver. Very nice, indeed. An excellent movie set, too!

My high school (in Hilo , HI) had a red cinder track when I went there in the late fifies, and more than 60 years later it's still the high school's only track. I get on it every so often.

The red cinders are volcanic cinders, which makes it a little unusual.

PT in Eugene wrote:

Lot of great comments/memories here. Nothing to add except the last time I ran on a cinder track was in 2010--the Brocton Oval in Stanley Park, Vancouver. Very nice, indeed. An excellent movie set, too!

Oh yeah, I remember that one! It's been many years...

Absolutely right, a perfect movie set.

I love this thread. I hope we get more stories.

I always wondered how much faster modern tracks are. I'm sure a lot depends on conditions deteriorating during a meet.

I ran a 50.7 440 yd dash on cinders.

I wonder what that would be on a modern track and 400 meters (400 is maybe 0.3 seconds shorter).

Same here . . . a little slower though, 51.9. A really poor track . . . was like running in a sandbox. I was a quarter miler in March, a half-miler in April, and a miler in June. Go figure. Ran on red clay at PVHS, CA (some workouts we ran barefoot) and on cinders at BHS, NJ. First time on an all-weather track was the green Tartan one at the Penn Relays. Couldn't believe the spring it had! Absolutely amazing.

I took a somewhat bloody fall on a cinder track one time in HS during the distance medley. It wasn't the end of the world but I was cut up a lot more than if I had fallen onto a dirt track. As a 4x400 and 800 runner, I had overestimated the ability of our 1600 guy to successfully navigate a hand-off. He never even moved an inch... just stood there holding his hand up as I plowed right into him. Good times!