Is track and field too difficult for casual participants to be involved in?

Why would anyone want to anyways? Ultimately aren't we all working towards the gold standard of the marathon? Why would anyone be content to run shorter distances? Running a mile is so easy! I started out by working up to 5k. I had a 10k under my belt before I got shanked out on the trail and ended up here. But I was going to tackle that marathon someday. My new Vibrams really started taking my running to another level.

Mexico wrote:

I've noticed that the big meets are getting bigger and the small meets are fading away because the support needed to run them are just not there. Does T&F need a facelift?

Renting a middle school facility is not that expensive. If it's rec and local, people shouldn't expect a world class facility. I get your point, the jumps are expensive. Maybe they need to go back to sawdust.

I don't think it's necessarily that much easier to start up a rec league in other sports. You still need the space, and (for some sports) officials.

I think the biggest problem is that it's such an individual pursuit and you can tell in advance just by times who's going to win most of the races. I can have fun playing flag football against a team with one guy who's a better athlete than anyone on my team. You look for a way to limit the best player, or exploit mismatches against everyone else, or something. Maybe he drops a couple passes - there's the chance we might win despite the athletic difference.

A 400m race against a guy who I know is 3 seconds faster than me isn't all that interesting for either of us. He's going to win every time unless he pulls something, so why bother? If I want to know how fast I can run 400m, I can just go to the track and find out for myself.

There are definitely some people out there who want to just be the fittest they can and race even if they're never going to win, but it takes a particular personality and I think most people wouldn't do rec sports if they knew in advance they were going to lose every game.

yes, PV equipment comes at a dear price, but don't forget that the track itself is the most expensive part of the equation. Heck, the 400 hurdles uses the entire track (all the lanes) plus up to 80 hurdles. PV isn't looking so bad now.

Jav might be the cheapest to do, all you need is a measured sector, a tape measure, and the spear. You can even get by with a grass runway.

Long live field events!

It is annoying that road racing opportunities are plentiful, but there is very little in the way of track meets for open age athletes.

laps wrote: Renting a middle school facility is not that expensive. If it's rec and local, people shouldn't expect a world class facility. I get your point, the jumps are expensive. Maybe they need to go back to sawdust.

There is not a single middle school in my city that has a rubber track, or any track at all, and I live in a big city. Many childrens competitions are competed on cinders. It's 1200 to rent out a track at a local high school, but that doesn't come with anyone to work the meet. Even with volunteers you need officials to work events since you can't work every one of them yourself. So it's roughly 2k to host a meet. That's with no frills at all.

Yes, but look at the number of softball fields compared to tracks. Far more adults are engaged in recreational softball than would consider entering an all comers track meet.

There is no way in hell there has ever been any track meet with "tens of thousands" of people entered.

Way Wrong wrote:

There is no way in hell there has ever been any track meet with "tens of thousands" of people entered.

except penn relays... the 4X400 goes on for daaaaaaaaaaays

Mexico wrote:

There is not a single middle school in my city that has a rubber track, or any track at all, and I live in a big city. Many childrens competitions are competed on cinders. It's 1200 to rent out a track at a local high school, but that doesn't come with anyone to work the meet. Even with volunteers you need officials to work events since you can't work every one of them yourself. So it's roughly 2k to host a meet. That's with no frills at all.

I live in a small city but there are numerous track and field meets at a variety of levels in addition to the school sponsored sports. For adults one of the local universities either rents their track very cheaply or gives it to the track club, I'm not sure which. The officials are all volunteers. They do run an abbreviated schedule of events with many of the field events only being run if people show an interest in them.

Really? Where I live, outside the US, I can think of three to four rubber athletics track within a radius of a few miles. All are free to use and all hold regular open meetings in the summer.

An this is fairly typical of any mid-sized town in continental Europe. I wouldnt put the US on a pedestal like that, really.

Way Wrong wrote:

There is no way in hell there has ever been any track meet with "tens of thousands" of people entered.

I think he said that tens of thousands of athletes were entered in meets across the country, not tens of thousands in one particular meet.

Captain Awesome wrote:

Way Wrong wrote:

There is no way in hell there has ever been any track meet with "tens of thousands" of people entered.

I think he said that tens of thousands of athletes were entered in meets across the country, not tens of thousands in one particular meet.

Do you realize how small of a number tens of thousands across the country is? 32,000 is only 1/10,000 the population of the US. There are probably more people in LA playing Warcraft than that number right now as we speak.

K Relays gets 10,000 entrants every spring.

If you're really bad at these other sports, you don't tend to get shown up because you're in a team and you blend in.

If you're really bad on the track everyone can see and it's a bit soul destroying.

Casual team sports are fun, get whooped on the track every week isn't.