Is there any wooden 11-laps to a mile track left in the USA?

You are correct. It felt great for about four laps and then the energy loss started.

For a number of years the ACC Championships were held on a 10 lap wooden track at the Coliseum Annex in Greensboro. Great environment for a meet, with tight racing and close crowds. Track was slick and slow, and they had to bring the sledgehammer out from time to time to put the track back together. Great memories.

Ran a 4*880 relay on the old 11 lap Garden track - trying to pass on that track was very hard.

My it bands hurt just thinking about it

Spot on in regards to the competition of the surfaces.

I supervised the assembly of the Millrose track in Madison Square Garden for over 30 years and was also the surveyor for most of that time.

I have hundred of stories (many nightmares) in regards to the Millrose MSG track that I will break up into several sections just because I don't want to write a long reply.

Length of the track:

The last version of the Millrose track was 11 laps to 1600 meters. Howard Schmertz and I thought it was important to have this distance because of all of the relays. 4 x 400 - each leg ran 2.75 laps. 4 x 800 - each leg ran 5.5 laps.

Storage of the Track:

For many years the track was stored in Madison Square Garden. If you are a regular at the Garden you know that the field of play is actually on the fourth floor of MSG. The track was stored on one of the lower floors. Eventually the Garden needed the space and the track was moved to a storage place in New Jersey. This was a problem because it took several tractor trailers to ship it and ever time it was loaded /unloaded pieces would get damaged or missing.

Springs?:

There were no springs built into the track but the nature of the construction could produce some spring or bouncy spots. The older tracks had a wooden frame with a wood top and the last version built by Mondo incorporated a metal frame with plywood covered with the Mondo rubber surface. The space between the wooden frame could produce a bouncy affect especially on the straight sections of the oval. Not as much as on the turns because those sections resembled more of a trapezoid with the end closer to the curb . The Mondo track was much firmer and heaver with less noticeable bouncy spots. This was actually more of an issue (even today) with runways for the PV, LJ, & TJ depending where the cross supports are located.

The sprint straight:

When I first starting working Millrose back in the late 70's, the entire infield was raised wood sections. And as every old timer knows, the ends of the oval needed to be dropped down for the sprint races (that's another story). Those oval sections were actually part of the sprint track and it was a nightmare getting all the pieces to fit in a short time. Plus there were small pieces of the infield that had to fit against the oval sections that never really fit correctly. I would tape them over with duct tape and keep my fingers cross that the sprinters would get

their spikes caught. One of the versions of the Millrose wooden track had sections of the infield that we would flip that had a rubber surface for the high jump apron.

The last version did not use a raised infield but instead just had Mondo rolled out. This made it easier for the sprints because all we had to do was remove the end oval sections (Mondo underneath) but it could be hell trying to get the sections to fit back again.

More to come......

Oh Please wrote:

Isn't the track they use at Millrose still 11 laps and wooden?

Millrose hasn't been held at MSG for years, it's now held at the Armory which is standard 200m synthetic.

RichardRider, seems we grew up around the same time, as I too was at many of those meets and remember them like it was yesterday. Even though I'm a huge distance fan, seeing Bubka clear 19 in LA was maybe THE highlight for me (even more than getting Eamonn's autograph or riding an elevator in MSG Hershel Walker)

How about dressing next to the legendary Glen Cunningham (he was at the Old Garden for a ceremonial lap around the track) or conversing with Bill Crothers from Canada, again as we were both getting dressed for the meet. I also remember picking up Mary Decker's spikes that she had left behind in the warmup area off the Garden track and bringing them to her as she was headed out to the track in one of her first races in NY. Howard Cosell came to one of the meets and sat with coaches and athletes on the floor of the Garden by the finish line (they had seating there and standing room around the turns), as did Telly Savalas on another occasion. Those were the days.

When i think about Wooden tracks, automatically think about the Chairman Mr Eamon Coughlin

I went to high school in Queens, NY in the mid-70s. We had a 5 lap/mile cinder track for outdoor workouts. In the winter you couldn’t really shovel the cinder track without destroying it so we had an 11 lap/mile wooden track that would be set up on the infield in the winter. It was steeply banked across all lanes and broke down into many segments that were stored in the school basement. Lugging out the track was a ritual foisted on the underclassmen each year. It was always a great sound barreling around on the boards.

The Armory was a flat 200 meter wooden track that was notorious for splinters. I haven’t been back to run on the new state of the art track yet. The mezzanine bleachers used to have thin metal panels below the guardrail that spectators would bang on to cheer their teams. I loved the echoing racket!

My sister now lives in Chatham, NY and the Morris Memorial track mentioned earlier is tiny and fairly useless for running. It is a mezzanine level track above a small gym floor and is about two or three lanes wide, flat, with sharp turns at the corners. It is well short of 100m around - probably 24 laps/mile. Hardly even useful for jogging.

no more wrote:

Oh Please wrote:

Isn't the track they use at Millrose still 11 laps and wooden?

Millrose hasn't been held at MSG for years, it's now held at the Armory which is standard 200m synthetic.

The track at the Garden was synthetic too. What's underneath the synthetic surface at the Armory?

Rhody Rhody Rhody wrote:

RichardRider, seems we grew up around the same time, as I too was at many of those meets and remember them like it was yesterday. Even though I'm a huge distance fan, seeing Bubka clear 19 in LA was maybe THE highlight for me (even more than getting Eamonn's autograph or riding an elevator in MSG Hershel Walker)

That's really cool. My bedroom walls were covered with every newspaper clippings, pages from Sports Illustrated etc... that I could get my hands onStill have them.

There is also one in Enid, OK that is 160m/lap that hosts a couple meets a year. No springs. A large teammate of mine broke it senior year by stepping down too hard as he came out of blocks in the 400m.

No indoor tracks ever had springs. Not sure where that idea comes from. The "bounce" those wooden tracks had was from the wood on wood supports. I explained all that in another thread.

When I coached at Blair Academy in northwest NJ (1968), we had a 220 yd wooden track outdoors. One side of the bank track was regular height. The other side was at least twice as high or even higher, closer to what bike racers had for their wooden tracks. It was very weird running on that track and we had lots of shin splints, which I am guessing came from the extreme banking. I may still have a photo of that track.