Shoveling snow off track?

There is no indoor tracks anywhere close to where I live so one night I went to a high school track to shovel enough in lane 1 so I could run, stopped after 25 meters. I thought it would be pretty easy but 400 meters is a really big distance to clear. Maybe if I had three more people we could have done it. There was about 4-5 inches of heavy snow on the track.

200 meters of shoveling and your workout's over, buddy. But whatever floats your boat.

Darn. Too slow.

But yeah, that has got to be a heck of a lot of work. I was going to say 100 meters, but wasn't sure if that was too much or not. But even 25 meters, huh?! Not that surprised.

A buddy of mine cleared a path one time all the way around while I was taking an intersession class. From what I heard it was pretty tough, I was lucky to not have to shovel anything. There were two other people there (girl and guy) but I don't think they helped him. Can't remember how much snow was on the ground, but definitely more than 3 inches.

Looking back, the four of us did a tempo run. It would have just been easier to run on the roads.

yeah. you cant appreciate how hard it is until you are out there with a shovel haha.

well nowhere around here has an available indoor track. so i was considering waking up tomorrow around 8, shoveling it off with the help off a friend, possibly snow blowing it. and then going home and sleeping/eating and coming back around 1 to do the workout. i dont know, there's probably a good 6 inches of snow... but gosh darnit the roads are tractionless and i want to do some easy 1k repeats!

One of the Cornell guys did this and made a video. But I think he only shoveled off 50m, with a loop on each end, and went back and forth. Did a respectable tempo run too.

My buddies and I did it my freshman year and a week later my coach got an email from the AD saying that shoveling the track voids the warranty of the track.

Technically it's bad for the track. you could accidentally scoop up a big shovelful of rubber along with the snow. Snowblowing would be really bad. You could rip the whole thing up. Just do your workout on the roads. Or drive to an indoor track you lazy bum.

the indoor tracks are not accessible. Or i guess one is, but it's 16 laps to the mile at a lifetime fitness...

And our coach has shoveled the track before, so to be honest i am not too worried about the warranty part

I lived in Great Falls, Montana one winter, and the track and entire field were buried under snow.

So I located the start, and stepped all the way around the track. Then I stepped around around my footprints, step-ran around those, then ran around those. This made a groove in the snow, and the snow and ice disappeared from that part of the track before anywhere else. Once I timed myself for a mile in singlet, shorts and spikes but didn't do that again because I was freezing trying to get my clothes back on.

One day I was on the 4th floor getting out of a class and someone yelled at the end of the hall, hey someone's been running on the track! I went to look and all you could see for two full fields over was the outline of the track that I'd made. It made me feel good that they'd noticed but I didn't say anything. That was the old type of track though, not rubberized.

gfdgd wrote:

Technically it's bad for the track. you could accidentally scoop up a big shovelful of rubber along with the snow. Snowblowing would be really bad. You could rip the whole thing up. Just do your workout on the roads. Or drive to an indoor track you lazy bum.

indoor tracks in CONNECTICUT are all locked up!

Did this last week. Had a good workout and contrary to what these whimps are saying I was able to have a good workout as well. Key is do it before you warm up so you can get some blood flowing and you should feel good after 10 minutes into your warm up. good luck! definitely tougher than it sounds but just focus on lane one.

Needed to do a workout the first day of my senior track season. Day before had the entire team come out and help me shovel. It took forever even with a ton of people and I got in trouble for it, but got the 10X400 in. It was a ton of work though.

Did it, with the help of a friend i cleared 200m. Did fartleks instead of 800's or 1k's. Going back tomorrow to clear the rest

My high school track coaches did this once for our indoor teams when 2 to 4 inches of snow fell on the track. I don't remember how many lanes, but it was at least lane 1 they cleared (they might have done parts of lane 2 for 100m but I don't remember). It was really nice of them to do that for us.

Couple of my buddies did it once so I could run a 3200 time trial.

i ran for dana college in nebraska. we didnt have an indoor track and had to do our workouts outside. last winter was awful and a few... and i emphasise few, teammates and i shoveled the track numerous times. we shoveled 3 lanes all the way around each time so we could run repeats. it really sucked but was worth it. as for my advice, just get a few shovels and a few teammates and just get it done. if your track is in good condition you wont ruin the track at all. just be careful.