I used to race at the NYC armory all the time. Now that I have moved to the NYC area I am thinking about training there once it gets cold out. I was wondering how crowded the place gets during practice hours. I was also curious about the Park Slope YMCA, since they have a 200 meter flat track there. Any NYC runners out there know?
The evening sessions are very crowded at the Armory. The day time sessions are not.
How crowded are we talking? Will I be able to run a couple of 300s or maybe a 20 minute tempo? Or is it just one huge jog/walk fest in lanes 1-6
You can definitely get in a solid workout. You'll have to swerve around some joggers from time to time, but plenty of legit high school teams do workouts there without too much of an issue. They organize the flow of traffic pretty well. Just stay aware of your surroundings, and you'll be fine.
Do they have designated lanes for people running faster? I think I will pay the entrance fee a few times just to check out the how packed the facility is before signing up for an entire season
Lanes 4 and 5 are reserved for faster than 32 seconds per lap. I don't know how fast you are, but even pretty good distance runners would be on the inside most of the time. Still worth checking out.
You would have to be out of your mind to do a 20 minute tempo run on that track when it's busy in the evening sessions.
The high school runners are shoo'd from the track when the open training session starts. Good luck getting around the for-profit junior college sprinters who stand in all the lanes or the CPTC folks who start and stop at random places on track.
Working out in the evening session is more like human slalom racing than trying to hit paces.
training on the armory track is like merging onto a crowded highway. Your best bet is to do short cruise intervals with short rest. No way can you do a steady run with the crowd.
northern pike is absolutely correct.
Any other decent indoor tracks in manhattan that are open to the public?
Chelsea Piers has an indoor track but you could probably only afford the membership of you make > $200K.
I use the outdoor tracks year round, even if I have to dodge ice and flooded inside lanes.
I did a pyramid workout on the track at Van Cortland Park, in the dark, with ice on the track, in sub freezing temperatures with a 25 mile headwind on the back straight. Strangely I was the only runner there.
It took me over an hour after the workout to stop shivering.
Okay, so it sounds like NYC armory can get pretty packed. Anyone try training at the park slope YMCA?