Running Group of Hobby Joggers in Boulder, CO gets all Running Groups banned

haha land of the free. cant even use a track you already paid for with your taxes

To the guy laughing at Laramie. They have 3 tracks and a brand new one being built now. That's 4 (3 of them mondo) for a town of 30k. If you include indoor tracks, there are 7. No BS rules. They have 24 hour run and relay for life held on these tracks..no AD complaining about that.

It has the most tracks in the world based on population size. Even the JR high here has a track.

All this at 7200 feet. This is the best kept secret in the running world.

haha wrote:

haha land of the free. cant even use a track you already paid for with your taxes

Ah yes, the "I pay your salary!" guy.

Thank god for you and your $0.013 that you contributed to the track, and also a big thanks to you for all of the roads and bridges that you paid for. I don't want to even think about where we'd be without you.

TruthSayer wrote:

To the guy laughing at Laramie. They have 3 tracks and a brand new one being built now. That's 4 (3 of them mondo) for a town of 30k. If you include indoor tracks, there are 7. No BS rules. They have 24 hour run and relay for life held on these tracks..no AD complaining about that.

It has the most tracks in the world based on population size.

One track per 4,200?

My town has one track per 300. That is a total of one track and 300 people. Obviously if my town was the size of Laramie we would have 100 tracks.

Why I remember when Potts Field was a cinder track, and then for years a black asphalt affair. Ran in a 24 hour (1 mile segments, so they had hundreds participating) relay put on by one of the local clubs to raise money for resurfacing. There were just one or two clubs in town, and some informal (although national/world class) training groups.

Those were good days.

#bringbackthe80s

TruthSayer wrote:

To the guy laughing at Laramie. They have 3 tracks and a brand new one being built now. That's 4 (3 of them mondo) for a town of 30k. If you include indoor tracks, there are 7. No BS rules. They have 24 hour run and relay for life held on these tracks..no AD complaining about that.

It has the most tracks in the world based on population size. Even the JR high here has a track.

All this at 7200 feet. This is the best kept secret in the running world.

Except the fact that Laramie is a hole

Not to mention St Vrain.

Many are tracks much closer to Boulder than Laramie.

kvothe wrote:

Get yer facts straight wrote:

Also, While the public pays for the track is is for the school's use. Just because the public pays for the schools library does that give anyone a right to go in and start reading? No.

There are other libraries for the public. Do we prohibit school children from visiting them because they have libraries at school? No, that'd be absurd. Yet there are no public tracks, well there might be a handful somewhere, but not boulder, and not any town USA. Where is a runner to work out? Despite letting school children, teachers, even well to do principals who could get into the school library even on saturday if they wanted, use the public library, we don't turn around and let the public use school tracks. You hit the nail on the head, but got everything backwards.

You are using flawed logic. It doesn't matter if there are other libraries in town. It's irrelevant. The issue is the use of public school facilities by the public which goes outside the scope of what their intended use. The track's main use is for school kids. A public library is by definition available to all the public, a school track isn't a "public" track.

A pro runner has no more rights to a public track than a hobby jogger. they don't. Now a town might decide to give them more rights based on either a payment, or wanting to look like they support pro athletes or if the athlete is also a HS/Middles school coach.

CU is a public institution and they limit the public use of the track. No one seems to have a problem with that.

BVSD charges for use of nearly all their facilities (even though there are other facilities for the public) things like fields, parking lots, rooms.

The Rate for stadium is Commercial Rate - $123.00/hr . The runners had been getting a free ride. Time to pay up.

Can somebody tell me why the NB and Oiselle athletes get to train at the CU track during closed hours where as the rest of the public is shut out? Surely these athletes are not all listed as official CU coaches.

because they are coached by official cu coaches maybe?

You seem to know it all. Congratulations. What stadium are you talking about? Boulder, or another community? What's your source.

The situation is not unlike tennis courts back in the pre running boom era. Now most tennis courts are private, or require a fee.

Agree with one thing, the clubs should probably pay a user fee in a place like Boulder where demand will be very high. In fact there should be a registration system and per capita fee. So if the elite club with 6 or 7 athletes would pay something like $5 each for an hour (so $30-$35), and the massive club with 80 runners would pay at the same rate (but $400). Limit or do not allow use during school hours, or when teams are using the tracks.

Rules of etiquette would apply so that slow joggers take the outside lanes, faster runners get the inside, while doing reps, but step to the outside lanes when doing the 'interval' (a term that no one understands anymore!).

Golden is 40 minutes away and Colorado School of Mines' track is private and not open to the public.

This is ridiculous on all accounts. But the statement (I'm paraphrasing) "Don't have access to a track..." is the most ridiculous. There are several high school tracks within a 20 min drive of Fairview. The "woe is me" game is tiring. Don't exaggerate about lack of access to a free facility when you can hop in your car, on your bike, on the bus, etc to go somewhere else.

Why is Fairview's track so highly regarded? I trained some there on my college team, but wasn't blown away by the track. The surface is good for a high school, but not amazing. Is it because it's open to the public, like every other public high school track?

Sounds like someone in the Boulder area needs to build a private track and charge for its use. Maybe a good business opportunity.

A lot of high schools have restricted access to their tracks after all the school shootings. I used to be able to do workouts in the morning at the local high school track. But after the school district tightened their visitor policies, the track was closed to the public and only open for a short time in the evening before it got dark. Running groups use the track for workouts, but never have more than a dozen people doing a workout at the same time.

The group in Boulder has real athletes working as coaches and should have known better than to abuse public access to the track. But the school needs to work through issues with the community and not just lock everyone out because a few are doing stupid things.

Mines not yours wrote:

Golden is 40 minutes away and Colorado School of Mines' track is private and not open to the public.

20 minutes & might be able to negotiate limited use. Other options in Boulder Co, Jeffco, Arapaho, Larimer counties.

I think the coaches at Revolution Running have to take the majority of the blame rather than their paying members. The coaches, who are experienced runners and know track etiquette, should teach them the rules. I.e. you shouldn't be running side by side on a track across more than one lane - you should go single file so other runners can pass you. When jogging you should move to outside lanes. Etc. There is nothing more frustrating than having to pass people who are running side by side covering 3 or more lanes. If they were single file in lane one running slowly, that would be fine b/c they'd be easy to pass. But to create slow moving roadblocks on the track is unforgivable.

Fairview was the only public school track that allowed runners on it during school hours. All other public school tracks do not. Boulder, Longmont High, Centaurus High, and Erie are part of their football stadiums which are locked up. Niwot High has a lady that lurks around the track whose sole mission in life is to kick people off. The middle school tracks are all dirt or asphalt and again closed during school hours.

People saying pros with contracts should pay for use, how many pros do you think actually make a salary from running? You do realize that the amount you are suggesting athletes pay to use a track would add up to more than what most pro runners make in a year from running. Most pro runners in Boulder actually work full or part time jobs outside of the sport to cover living expenses. The pro athletes in town that have salary (Goucher, Simpson, Coburn, and Sutherland) are all coached by Wetmore so they get track access through CU (which has shut down club access to the track over the last 5 years).

It's not as simple as just drive 30min into Golden to use as with work flow traffic, that 30min drive is now an hour each way. Which again, most of the pro athletes in town ALSO WORK JOBS.

The issue of use wasn't recreational vs. pro runners on the track as there are plenty of recreational groups that use that track, that control their size, and respect the workouts being performed. The issue was one big recreational group with inexperienced runners, who weren't instructed properly on how to conduct themselves during workout flow (aka step off the track when not running, move out to the outer lanes when jogging, don't run 6 abreast across the track, etc). The Revolution Running group has gotten away with a no overhead, no permit for use of facility or trails for years while their group continues to grow to a size that is unmanageable for the number of coaches they have present. They really should split their groups up into smaller groups and stagger workout times, but they do not when they show up to the track (on the busiest workout day of the week for all the groups in town). In Boulder, there are a lot of groups, it is a really active town. There are at least 4 pro groups in town and another 5-6 recreational groups. But, there is only one group that has caused this amount of frustration due to their lack of controlling group size, disregard for the other groups when utilizing the same space, and not properly instructing their runners on how to act when on the track.

Fairview High School has been accommodating to the running community in Boulder for years, but this group took advantage of the system by cattle prodding their masses onto the space preventing all others from utilizing the space at the same time. In the twitter discussion, the pace coach for Revolution Running said their group is no different than 5 other groups having 10 athletes out there at the same time. This is flawed because 5 other groups using it at the same time are also there to do interval workouts, meaning they aren't continuously running around the track. There are periods where athletes are off the track so the 50 or so that would be there, may seem more like 10-15 running around the track at any given time. Revolution running is 50-100 runners continuously running around the track all at the same time across all the lanes. It is a giant traffic jam. No wonder people in the community complained. Their neighborhood track was being taken over by a significant business, with no overhead, and disregard for those around by cramming as many people as they do into the space at one time.

It's ironic that the coach in the twitter discussion for Revolution Running is chastising professional runners in town for getting mad at his way-to-large recreational group but used to do marketing for Oregon Track Club. Hypocrite. You would think he and the head coach of Revolution Running (Ewen North) would be a little more empathetic toward the chaos they've created in town, as both of them used to be pretty competitive runners. But, it shows how perspectives can change when they are sucking $$$$$ from the pockets of the Hobby Jogger wealthy in Boulder while flipping a middle fingers back at the Boulder running community.

haha wrote:

haha land of the free. cant even use a track you already paid for with your taxes

Yeah, and they won't let me use the chemistry labs either. Or the auto shop. And they won't let me in to use the school kitchen either. They even stopped me from coming into the gym to shoot baskets. My tax dollars funded all that stuff, what the hell!!!