I must admit it sounds pretty amazing. Banked hydraulic plus an 8 lane jogging track.
I must admit it sounds pretty amazing. Banked hydraulic plus an 8 lane jogging track.
i still like penn state
Can't beat Birmingham Crossplex. Not with the seating and VIP boxes they have. Everything is mondo and hydraulic banked with warm up area.
Liberty's looks nice. Crossplex is cute. But damn girl check out what Michigan's putting together: http://support.mgoblue.com/victors-for-michigan/explore/ (not sure how well this will paste, but you might have to click the "New Outdoor and Indoor Track Facilities" link.) In short: 200m hydraulic banked (hey! that sounds like the others! What's the fuss about, Nurtherner?), 300m warm-up track surrounding the bank (ohhhhhhhhh.. I get it now.). If I had any eligibility left I'd become a Wolverine.
My team raced there and it is a great track facility. Beynon surface is a little softer than Mondo, but you can still run very fast. Above the 100m warm-up straight is a team camp and there are plenty of bleachers for spectators to watch. Down the road from the track are 3 artificial turf fields that can also be used for warm-ups. Probably as nice as any facility out there.
No. It's not Mondo.
plus, after the race is over you can head over to the artificial ski slope and carve some POW.
that school has more money than it knows what to do with.
Raced there last weekend. The facility is incredible. Tons of space for spectators, plenty of bathrooms, and a separate 100m strip to do strides and warm up.
The track is really nice, probably not as fast as BU/Armory, but certainly not slow either. Kind of hard for me to tell, because I am not in as good of shape vs. when I was racing at BU a lot last year.
I still think ETSU's track is one of the best for hosting meets. The track is not banked, but the seating and organization is much better than any other indoor track I've seen.
Issz wrote:
I still think ETSU's track is one of the best for hosting meets. The track is not banked, but the seating and organization is much better than any other indoor track I've seen.
http://cdn.streamlinetechnologies.com/etsubucs/media/mtrack/2012-13/News/Dome%20Track%20Stock%20285012895234.jpg
Underrated facility, although the surface is quite old/hard. Like a poor man's MSG with that cavernous dome.
sutherner wrote:
Can't beat Birmingham Crossplex. Not with the seating and VIP boxes they have. Everything is mondo and hydraulic banked with warm up area.
+1
If we're going to throw ETSU out there, Idaho State will trump that every time. If they ever throw mondo on that oval it'll be one of the best overall facilities out there.
I think the UNL hydraulic banked Mondo track can hold its ground with these also.
http://www.huskers.com/ViewArticle.dbml?&ATCLID=208569672&DB_OEM_ID=100
Nurtherner wrote:
Liberty's looks nice. Crossplex is cute. But damn girl check out what Michigan's putting together:
http://support.mgoblue.com/victors-for-michigan/explore/(not sure how well this will paste, but you might have to click the "New Outdoor and Indoor Track Facilities" link.) In short: 200m hydraulic banked (hey! that sounds like the others! What's the fuss about, Nurtherner?), 300m warm-up track surrounding the bank (ohhhhhhhhh.. I get it now.). If I had any eligibility left I'd become a Wolverine.
To be clear, the jump from "cute" to "damn girl" is from an extra 100m of warm up track?
That is quite nice.
swerve wrote:
i still like penn state
This. Times ten.
It's not as well known because State College isn't logistically suited to host a lot of high profile meets. But the track and the facility are awesome, both for athletes and spectators. And fast as you-know-what. Just look at the times that are run there year after year.
I personally like Yale's track, but just for a distance meet. The fact that it's 4 lanes kind of gives you that European style atmosphere. The bank is nice and smooth, you can roll on that track. I wish they would do a distance only meet there and have all the big names show up. We see that a lot with outdoor meets, but not so much indoor.
tse wrote:
Nurtherner wrote:Liberty's looks nice. Crossplex is cute. But damn girl check out what Michigan's putting together:
http://support.mgoblue.com/victors-for-michigan/explore/(not sure how well this will paste, but you might have to click the "New Outdoor and Indoor Track Facilities" link.) In short: 200m hydraulic banked (hey! that sounds like the others! What's the fuss about, Nurtherner?), 300m warm-up track surrounding the bank (ohhhhhhhhh.. I get it now.). If I had any eligibility left I'd become a Wolverine.
To be clear, the jump from "cute" to "damn girl" is from an extra 100m of warm up track?
The jump has so much more involved than just an extra 100m. As far as I can tell from their respective websites, the Crossplex (60m x4 lanes of warmup straightaway) and Liberty's new track (100m x8 lanes) offer a cuteness factor for sprint training and a pain-in-the-ass for warming up indoors if you're a distance athlete. The track at UM will have the same (for all intents and purposes, setting aside any minor differences in track surfacing materials) 200m hydraulic banked setup in addition to a 300m track surrounding the 200m racing surface. This affords athletes the ability to warm up and train on the more forgiving loop (fewer turns seems pretty ideal) without having to turn around every 60-100m as an athlete would at the Crossplex or at Liberty's facility, respectively. It's usually damn cold in Ann Arbor during indoor season...except for this year, but I guess we can blame global heating for that, right? I jump at any opportunity to run indoors in crummy weather for both the quality of training (tough to train in ice/snow) and injury prevention.
In any case, Liberty, the Crossplex, ETSU, Penn State, Idaho State, and Nebraska all have excellent, world-class facilities that put them all among the top on the planet. However, none of those took the next step to combine the benefits of a banked track for racing with the oversized track for training, all under the same roof. Sure, the "extra 100m of warm up [sic] track" seems insignificant, but the images shown in the renderings on the link provided demonstrate so much more than a simple warm-up area. It's not an "extra 100m." It's 300m of warm-up area, which by my math is in the ballpark of 200-240m more warm-up surface than is offered at either Liberty or the Crossplex (I was too lazy to look into all the other facilities in too much depth). They set a new standard.
In short, damn, girl.
Please allow me to amend my above posts, for Rojo's initial post asks in the present tense, and it looks like Michigan won't be opening the doors on the new facility until next year, thereby disqualifying them from the running (hey that's kinda punny).
RemindMe! 1 year so I can bump this.
I concede this round to Liberty (or really any track that's better than the 3-lane, 120m rectangle above the rec center basketball courts that I was raised on).
Rojo,
Why did you begin your sentence with "I must admit"?