What is the strangest track that you have run on?

blap wrote:

The 4 lane 400m track at Nike Headquarters in Beaverton, OR also has trees in the infield and around the outside. There is one trail across the middle, which is the only place you can see the other side of the track. Has several statues around too, if I remember right. Pretty cool.

Agreed. Carved into a forest. Genious.

I ran a 200 meter there in HS for Memorial HS mid 60's it really messed me up for a long time when I would try and describe Laconia to others. I started to believe it was not true.

"Winter track" in upstate NY in the 1970's meant running dual meets and conference meets on parking lots, often in single digit temperatures. Our home track was a 400y setup with one near-hairpin turn. At least it was flat. Our two main rivals had 220y setups on parking lots that weren't close to being level, so you had uphill and downhill straights and turns. The reward for all this was the section meet at the end of the season at West Point's 300y indoor track. Heaven on earth, relatively speaking.

Reebok has a 4 lane synthetic track at their corporate HQ in Canton, Mass. Half of it is under the office building, the other half out in the open. It's used for product testing. The sheltered half is kind of like running in a parking garage.

Also, check out the crappy teen movie "10 Things I Hate About You" sometime. They filmed it at some school in the Pacific Northwest with a really odd-shaped track inside a huge stadium on the edge of the ocean. Does anyone know what school they used for filming?

The 100 yard at Lyndon was run in the opposite direction, but the "hill" on the track was barely noticeable and didn't effect the race. That one corner had a change in elevation of maybe 2-3 feet. I ran for Lamoille Union High, and we normally had a meet there during the season. The hill really wasn't a big deal.

Ed

I ran on a 8 lane track in Poland where around the 100m. start there were only 6 lanes, as the corner of the restroom builing took up the outer two lanes...

New Rochelle, NY's track is 350 meters, to fit into a space.

I don't know if this qualifies as a "track," but running indoors in high school led to some weird places, the weirdest being Mamaroneck High, in which we had a meet that consisted of running the hallways of the school, complete with lockers along the walls, that formed a square around the building.

besides the stanford banks (it was weird when i first saw it)...but the weirdest has to be hollywood high's...damn near a perfect square.

Nebraska's old indoor track under the south end of the football stadium...like running in a damp basement...was kidney-bean shaped

U of Hawaii is a rainbow, not really but the lanes are like 5 different colors.

Neighboring school (Sparta Highland)in Ohio had a cinder track that very noticeably sloped down on the front straight and up on the back straight. For the distance runners, it was like running cross. For the hundred guys, they all ran .2 or .3 faster than anywhere else.

How about a crappy gravel track that goes behind the bleachers on the backstretch.

The Belmont Stakes track in Elmont NY. That thing is 1.5 miles long

Hey mommy mommy and fly'n-

The Bubble is at Buff State (not UB) and The tunnel is at U of R (not RIT)! UB's track is lines painted on the basketball court...

Not exactly a track at a school, but something very interesting. Weequahic park in Newark, NJ has an all weather track surface that loops around the park, it's about 2.4 miles. It even goes up the hills.

Back in the late 60's and early 70's it was mostly odd tracks.

Our own track was cinders and over 5 laps to the mile. During a rain storm all the loose cinders would be deposited in one corner. If you were running the 200M you could break in at the corner. I would go to lane 3 and if my opponent went inside me he'd get mired in the loose stuff and I'd never see him again. The 100M hurdles started on a corner!

Another track we went to was square. It was just a field with the corners marked by old tires. No lines, not even for the inside of the track. Only rule - keep the tires on your left.

We ran straightaway 200s on some tracks. Even the state meet at Franklin Park in Boston was cinder. It was in good condition so we were happy to run there.

My favorite indoor track was Cox Cage in 1971. I had seen a high jump training film with John Thomas that was taken there so when my college team was going there I was thrilled. Then I got there. It was a snowy day and the snow was coming in through the roof. It was all uneven dirt. The polo team also practiced there.

Back then we also high jumped off the grass infield at most sites. The usual landing area was sawdust. I used to tape my wrists and use my hands to break the fall. At one school we had to land on a bed mattress set on top of tires. At another they dug a pit and filled it with sand. But when it got packed down they never dug it up. So it settled. You'd be landing on solid ground that was lower than the takeoff area. My school had foam so we were spoiled. That made it so much worse when we completed at another school.

Does anyone remember the guy from Worcester Mass that developed a suction cup sole for indoor surfaces. There'd be about 50 tiny suction cups on a shoe. We used to send our high jump shoes to him and he'd resole them. When the suction cups broke down we'd just send them back to be redone. The advantage was that your plant foot wouldn't slip on indoor surfaces. I was always more secure jumping with the shoe until my junior year at the Indoor New England Championship. I ran at the bar and planted my foot, only to have the sole completely peel off my shoe - as I went flying straight into the pit.

The wood plank, banked, bouncy indoor 200 meter track in Reno at the Livestock center. Not only do you feel like your running hills on a short track, but it smells like cow crap, literally.

WILSON high school in Easton, PA. Cinder, short by 50-60 meters, 4 lanes and more or less square. It was actually fun racing on the track because almost every event was slightly different. 800 meters was 2 ¼ laps. 400 meters was 1 and 1/8 of a lap with everyone toeing the same starting line with no lane assignments. First one to the turn won….2-mile and mile relays were renamed 8 lap relay and 4 lap relay…I don’t think there was even a inside rail, just a lump of dirt…