What's the biggest track faux pas you have ever witnessed?

1992 Olympic 10,000m final.

A lapped Moroccan runner helped another Moroccan runner win the race by pacing him and distracting the top Kenyan.

Vapid, clueless walkers getting bent that we block lane 1 at times during workouts. Usually middle aged ladies.

I was once doing a workout and someone had their untrained dog off leash. The dog chashed me around the track and tried to jump on my several times. Owner thought it was funny.

Heat runner wrote:

I ran the 10k today at Masters Outdoors in Baton Rouge, LA. About halfway through the race a runner stopped in the inside lane and begin stretching his calf using the inside rail to prop his foot up. He just stopped and camped there. What the hell is wrong with people.

Can anyone top that?

Doing mile repeats on a local six-lane track with a woman walking in lane one while her dog, on a retractable leash, was out in lane 5-6.

At my local HS track one summer, a small group of youth track people would work out there. Didn't bother me while I did my speed workout. But one time They had set up 400 m hurdles in lane one, and a few other random hurdles in the other lanes. Think I did my workout in lane 2. Worst thing is that nobody was using the hurdles, at least while I was there. Not sure if it was considered "their" track during their practices, but thought they were total d*cks about it.

Clockwise guy is one of my faves

Say 2-3 people are using the track like normal non-mongloids in counter clockwise rotation

Here comes clockwise guy in lane 2 doing mile repeats

A retired professional runner in my area leads a youth track group. They would show up on a public track every Tuesday and Thursday. As part of their warmups, they would run 100m and do some exercise, like planks, or pushups, or whatever. They would spread out across the entire track, blocking every lane. This coach should have known better, and also probably one of the first things he should coach in a youth track group, is track etiquette. Pissed me off so bad.

What the heck happened to this thread?! There a hysterical story posted on here and it has now disappeared. George is getting upset!!

Back in high school, at XC practice, we were doing some pretty quick 400 repeats, around 65 seconds. The football players were having practice on the inside turf and instead of standing on the sidelines by the bench, decided to use lanes 1 and 2 as their sideline. Despite our coaches requesting that they move out of the way and asking their head coach, they refused to move and just laughed it off. After a couple of repeats where we'd have to dodge them on the back straight, I got fed up. As I came around to the back stretch, I accelerated and just ran straight into one of the football players and shoved him off the track. He was pretty mad but after that lap the rest of the team moved off of the track completely. Shows you that even though we might be skinny, us cross country runners can still demand the respect of those big stupid lunks from the football team.

Didn't carl lewis get an erection before the long jump in 84 on national tv?

UsedToBeKnowItAll wrote:

A retired professional runner in my area leads a youth track group. They would show up on a public track every Tuesday and Thursday. As part of their warmups, they would run 100m and do some exercise, like planks, or pushups, or whatever. They would spread out across the entire track, blocking every lane. This coach should have known better, and also probably one of the first things he should coach in a youth track group, is track etiquette. Pissed me off so bad.

I would bet that is deliberate on the coach's part. He doesn't want anyone else there and he can't actually do anything about it since he leads a non-school group on a public track. So he purposely has his youth runners make the track inhospitable to anyone else trying to use it at the same time. I've seen exactly that happen many a time.

When I was in 7th grade track about a decade ago, our team was running the 4x100 (not me, I was a distance guy, obviously). Some girls from another schools team had wrapped up this girl in a blanket to where she couldn't see. She ended up stumbling onto the track and colliding with our team's runner, knocking him out of his lane and slowing him down. We recovered and ended up being 3rd or 4th, but got DQed for leaving the lane.

this chinese lady zig zags through all 8 lanes of the track at a fast walk. She always moves if she sees me coming or if I yell at her. We also had a kid on our team forget how many laps are in an 800 for indoor and he took off the 3rd lap. This was a DMR and he almost blew it for the team.

At our indoor conference race this year, a teammate of mine was leading the 3k, with about 1k left to go. He and one other runner (the favorite and eventual winner, had put some distance on the rest of the field. Both looked really strong, and seemed guaranteed to go 1-2 (or at least finish in the top 3-4). Suddenly, on the far side of the track, my teammate just disappears. Since my view was blocked from the far side of the track, I initially thought he had faded drastically, but realized he was way to far back, even for this. After the race, I found out that a rival team's coach had stepped out onto the track right in front of him and basically just leveled my team's runner (throw's coach. He didn't tackle him, he was just a big guy). So my teammate went from running first to finishing out of scoring position. He was a little shaken up by the fall, but not too bad. The guy who won kind of slowed down to wait and see if our runner would get back up quickly, but once he saw the rest of the field closing he kind of had to take off. No repercussions for the other coach. He just stole 8-10 points and walked off. I think I was more mad than the guy who got tripped.

SlipperyPete13 wrote:

What the heck happened to this thread?! There a hysterical story posted on here and it has now disappeared. George is getting upset!!

HOLES! I NEED HOLES!

I was running on the track and someone walked across without looking and I crashed into them because I didn't have time to stop.

Pup tent wrote:

Didn't carl lewis get an erection before the long jump in 84 on national tv?

which dude was he eyeballing?

Once in college indoor mile race, I went to start my kick at the Bell lap and shared myself but tried to hold it in for 200 meters. Didn't work. Needless to say I didn't stop to give anyone my name (cute blonde volunteer) and ran straight to the locker room shower without undressing or taking spikes off. I apologized to Coach for not finishing better and explained what happened. With a straight face he just said "shit happens". End of conversation. That was uncomfortable on so many levels.....