dumb q but What's faster for a 5k conditions - indoors on banked track OR outdoors?

Outdoors is significantly faster. Check the world records, or any school's records.

More interesting question: how much slower is a a 300m indoor track than a 400m outdoor?

asdfsadf wrote:

Outdoors is significantly faster. Check the world records, or any school's records.

That could be because fewer people try or care. I always did well on banked indoor tracks, I think all of my PRs were set there in highschool.

Ok son

depends on the conditions - if it's a 60 degrees out with clear skies, the outdoor track is gonna be faster. if it's raining/cold/windy indoors is gonna be faster.

The population of athletes that run indoors is much smaller than those than run outdoors. On that basis alone it wouldn't be appropriate to compare average or best times to determine which venue is faster.

Furthermore, of those that do run indoor meets, not all put a priority on indoor results.

Physics and calculus can provide an energy comparison of how much more energy is required to run a curve versus a straight at a given speed. I actually wasted the time to do that a couple years ago. I don't know where I put the results, but I do remember that at 5k speed the difference on an indoor flat 300m track and outdoor 400m track are negligible. The energy requirements are non-linear, so as speed increases the energy demands of the curve increase rapidly. A 200m indoors is much slower than 200m outdoors.

Calculations involving banked tracks become even more difficult since you are now adding a new variable (the degree of banking). By the time you start adding the degree of banking, the height of the runner, to the radius of the curve, etc. the problem becomes more involved than I was willing to analyze. Maybe some current college engineering/math majors would be willing to take on the problem.

Of course, as long as you are doing that, maybe you will also put together the model for the difficulty of running outdoors as a function of wind speed and direction (angle relative to the straights).

The answer to indoor v. outdoor depends on the athlete/facility dynamic as well. Eamonn Coghlan had an almost supernatural ability on the boards, as evidenced by his indoor PR's being faster than his outdoor ones. This may be a result of deliberately peaking for indoors, but he had plenty of incentive to run fast outdoors as well.

OTOH I don't expect David Rudisha to hit the indoor circuit too seriously, with his massive stride. Look at poor Wheating, getting beat by a (albeit gifted) guy just out of high school indoors, but then pushing and beating the world's best in outdoors.