US coaches, consider lucky. Many UK coaches "will face monthly bills ranging from £500 to over £1000" to use tracks

Looks like that's another "benefit" of Brexit.

The Brits are so screwed. I am really sorry. Good thing Rupert Murdoch didn't mess up the US that much.

The closest track to me, which is a 40 minute drive one way, costs £5 for 2 hours of use.

For one person or for the whole track?

Who is paying that?

One person using the track and paying it personally.

I don’t know how club hire works for it as it’s not something my club uses as people wouldn’t make the drive twice a week for training nights.

Can you fix the thread title?

Rojo can even use swearwords here. He can do what he wants. Of course we can't.

For a private individual, it's usually somewhere around £4-5 mark.

However, the majority of athletes in the UK get track access through their club. At mine track access is included in the membership - membership also includes competition licence, 4 track league meets, 4 XC league meets, 2x regional road relay, 2x national road relay, 1x XC relay, National and County XC champs.

Membership works out at £2 per week.

Hehe as you know, Murdaugh (see what I did there ;) ) owns fox news-entertainment corporation

My experience is similar, my local track is £5 a session so now I use the local cycle track for most sessions. I hardly ever see anyone using it 'in anger', usually it's people from the adjoining gym just warming up with a couple of laps of jogging.

A fairly local club recently upgraded their cinder track to tartan after years of fundraising and now members can use the track for free any time with some sort of key-fob access. Oddly though, if they want to use the track on their club training nights they have to pay £2 for the priviledge!

Cost athletes between $4-7 here in Australia but no cost for coaches....well at least in my city.

Nothing. Work out at Trafford all the time when there.

Not all high school or university tracks in the States are always able to be accessed now. Often they are locked. Sometimes athletes will still sneak in by climbing a fence or whatever.

More tracks are still open for public use than not but making them inaccessible is becoming more common. At one time someone probably got hurt while using a track and foolishly decided to sue a school district. That messed things up for others. School districts may be starting to decide that they have too much exposure to liability.

A few years back my soccer club used a gymnasium at an elementary school during the winter to play futsal. The school had us sign a liability waiver and there was a fee. It was inexpensive - something like $25 for 2 hours. I have a feeling that tracks may start doing the same. If no fee, the signing of a liability waiver at the least.

Also, coaches of professional athletes are paid by the athletes. I would assume that most would pass the expense on to the athlete. The athlete will be the one affected by the fees, not the coach.

Didn't use to pay (was part of membership of the club).

I think if you randomly turned up it was £2.50 to use the track, but this was a long time ago. Think the local one is £4 now, although there is another that is cheaper.

I am in a low cost of living area.

Is the US really free of this problem, if you are beyond the HS or college level? Many tracks which used to be accessible to the public are no longer available even if you are willing to pay.

Seriously. I live in a major metro area and can count on one hand the number of tracks that are accessible to the public at any time of day/week. It’s very frustrating having so many public schools within a few minutes drive with really nice tracks but still having to drive 30+ minutes to find one I can use.

I would happily pay a few bucks to use the track closest to me if that was even an option.

There is a public HS track within 1 mile of my home. It is locked during the day and its within sight of school buildings, so I'm not keen to hop the fence during daylight. It used to be open at like 5AM for some reason so I was doing my workouts then, but recently they've started closing it then, too.

Oh, and the HS charges the college team (who somehow doesn't have their own track) $500/hr for its use.

Someone explain to me how a public school can charge its own taxpayers for the use of a track? I get that a school has priority use of it (for practices, competitions, etc.) but even at 5AM, when no one else it out there?

Exactly - in most areas I’ve been to in the US the tracks are locked with no option to pay for access

Maybe it's to cover the wear and tear from almost every elite now being paced by a bike on the track. Even indoors!

I think these costs are for freelance coaches or personal trainers who want to book for exclusive use?

Obviously if you wanted to have exclusive use several evenings a month that would likely cost you a lot of money. It would be like hiring all the treadmills at the gym.

Coaches are usually part of a club or work for the national governing body so I don't know who this affects. Most clubs are desperate for coaches and will give them free membership if they're coaching club athletes.

To the original question, about £5/$6 to do a workout, but most facilities have annual or club memberships which work out much cheaper.