Somebody posed the question to me last night: when American tracks made the changeover to metric, how did most of them do it? Of course there is only a small difference in length between 440 yards and 400 meters. Did most schools create the shorter length by rebuilding/surfacing the entire track, or did most of them simply add a little more surface on the infield side and repaint the lines so lane 1 would have the correct distance?
There are still several tracks in my area that are still 440y around but are painted metrically, which makes taking splits...interesting. Start line and finish line are not the same for 400m+ events.
My school redid everything when it was time to resurface the track in the late 80s.
Most added the material on the inside. You can see some tracks that have extra surface outside of the last lane, where in the peak of the curve you see the most extra, those are the tracks that were converted.
good question,
our track they converted it by taking double out of one side and none out of the other. So one half was 202m and the other was 198m. Made things interesting.
Our track was cinders- they moved the rail. Then went all-weather.
Could adding material inside the existing track footprint and resurfacing the track account for the 9 lane track.
What was the first 9 laner to be used in a big meet?.
The Franklin Field story must be well documented.
Bet that cause some steeple pits to go from innies to outies.
My high school just repaved the track. It was due for repaving and the state had announced that it would be switching over in a few years (the state meet was metric but there was no requirement "down" the line).
When people came to our track, they ran metric. When we went almost everywhere else, we ran imperial. It was fun to watch the sprinters eyes when they heard times for the 100!
Eventually all tracks were changed over and from what I remember most were repaved and lined moving the radius "in".
"It was due for repaving..."
I bet some of the young kids don't remember asphalt tracks. Whatever you do...don't fall down in lane 1! On my old high school track lane 1 was so beat up if you fell you went home with part of the track in your butt.
I was sad when the replaced the asphalt with rubber. I remember one local track that wasn't resurfaced too well and the rubber bits kept coming up. Made things interesting.
Alan
Runningart2004 wrote:
"It was due for repaving..."
I bet some of the young kids don't remember asphalt tracks. Whatever you do...don't fall down in lane 1! On my old high school track lane 1 was so beat up if you fell you went home with part of the track in your butt.
I was sad when the replaced the asphalt with rubber. I remember one local track that wasn't resurfaced too well and the rubber bits kept coming up. Made things interesting.
Alan
A lot of college tracks today are rubberized asphalt. Columbia's sure is.
The local high school track here is still asphalt...complete with potholes in lane 1.
Runningart2004 wrote:
"It was due for repaving..."
I bet some of the young kids don't remember asphalt tracks. Whatever you do...don't fall down in lane 1! On my old high school track lane 1 was so beat up if you fell you went home with part of the track in your butt.
I was sad when the replaced the asphalt with rubber. I remember one local track that wasn't resurfaced too well and the rubber bits kept coming up. Made things interesting.
Alan
Oh, I've pulled gravel out of my hands before. Hated those damn things!
Then again, you have the new track at Greenwich (CT) H.S., probably one of the richest towns in America. They designed the track to fit around the new artificial turf field, so it came out LONG - I advised them to simply make it 440y, but they wanted to stay metric, so now they have a track like the old ones right after the switch to metric - multiple start lines, etc.
Oh well, at least they got MORE than they paid for, which must make the taxpayers happy.
As for Franklin Field, I think lane 9 there was designed so they could start more teams in the 4x400s for the Relays - by the time the lane ends, the runners have cut for the rail. Don't forget, lane 5 at FF is 400m - the inside 4 lanes are short.