What exactly were Cinder Tracks like?

I ran a memorial mile in college on a cinder track in 4:12. Keep in mind I was a 4:04 miler outdoor and a 4:06 miler indoor. I thought it was brutal I felt like I was going to fall on my butt every turn. I was 23 years old when I ran on one I am 37 now. In high school Most of our dual meets were run on dirt tracks however they were a bit different then cinder.

A ton of smaller high schools still have cinder tracks. Within a two hour radius of a big city, I’m sure you’ll be able to find at least one. Near me, a lot of the middle schools have a cinder track. I used to do workouts occasionally on the one near my house. I found it to be similar to running on a rail trail but much more firm. I actually quite enjoyed the crunch and the noise of the stones.

I graduated from high school in 1976. In my yearbook is the coolest picture of me running the 400 last leg of the medley relay. I'm coming around the last curve on our cinder track and you can see puffs of dust where my feet had hit the last 3 strides.

Cinder track on a rainy day, and a bestial come from behind effort by Zatopek

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvEBEK8_vqc

For you lucky runners that got to experience cinder tracks, your descriptions of them seem to be similar to crushed limestone rails/trails. How does crushed limestone today compare in feel to the cinder tracks of yore?

Yes most of my high school meets were on cinders, but even worse was pole vaulting into sand. I was only doing 10 feet, but you tried to land on your feet. I remember going to a college site and landing in sawdust & wood chips that were stacked like three feet high ( provided you landed in the right spot)- I would have done 16 feet if we had pits like today- yeah right- but I think I would have done at least 11 feet on my Swedish steel pole

I ran on cinders from 72-76 and these posts bring back memories. I see no one has mentioned that after you were done with a workout or race, it was like coming home from a coal mine! Blowing your nose (snotrocket or on your singlet) would produce a nice black luggie. Sometimes when I run on the shoulder of a rural road, the mixture of cast-off granular asphalt and dirt reminds me of running on cinders. That crunch just made you feel like you were workin as hard as possible.

Great post and the wooden tracks were part of the training mix in those days (in the Northeast at least) ((not sure if that would work in the movie or not)). The old timers remember when the beautiful Armory track facility in NY really was an Armory with rough wooden floors used for indoor track meets. Experienced the porcupine effect there many times!

Many small towns still have them. I live in a 100k + town and there's one about a mile from my house!

My high school in Ohio still has one. Before a meet our coach would make us line up across the track and walk a lap so we could pick up any large cinders and toss them off the to the side. Afterwards, the lime cart was brought out to make lane lines. Running on cinders never bothered us because that’s all we knew but the track could get pretty rutted after a good rainfall. We had to wear super long spikes and if you fell you spent a lot of time digging cinders out of your leg. Occasionally we raced on all weather tracks and they felt luxurious. My old HS is no longer allowed to host meets due to the cinders but I’m not sure who made that rule.

I ran ina dual meet on a dirt track, carried about a lb. of mud on each shoe to a 1:58.4 my senior year. I won. My friend's mom said I must be a "mudder." I had no idea at the time it was a horse racing term!

mebert wrote:

How did it sound?

Like eating Cap'n Crunch with your mouth open

Yep. I love the memory of that sound, the shoop crunch shoop crunch as you ran.

Zev wrote:

For you lucky runners that got to experience cinder tracks, your descriptions of them seem to be similar to crushed limestone rails/trails. How does crushed limestone today compare in feel to the cinder tracks of yore?

My HS was crushed granite. Some little pebbles. The noise was great. I was undefeated on my high school track, and most others locally, so it was a good time.

If you fell or got tripped up on a cinder track, you could get messed up pretty bad, and you'd have to pick little pieces of grit out of the wounds.

I ran at Rutgers in the early 1970s. The en-tout-cas track the earlier poster referenced was a mixture of crushed red brick, cinders, and clay, and was imported from England in 1964 in advance of the National AAU Championship that year. While it did not produce optimal results at that meet due to the fact that the surface was still "loose" as described by the great sprinter Bob Hayes, over time it came to be known as one of the fastest track surfaces in the eastern US. It drained well, and was both a good training and competition track. I also ran on a cinder track in high school, which still exists at Saint Bernard High School in Uncasville, CT. Memories include following someone for eight laps in a two mile race and then going home and picking cinders out of my thighs, and also spending most of several practices walking around the track with my fellow distance runners picking up and tossing large cinders that had been dumped to replenish the surface of the inside couple of lanes. Oh, those were the good old days.

MovieMaker wrote:

3. Cover a 400m track with cinders or dirt

Absolutely this is the way to go.

Sneak into some college track after hours and dump the dirt cinders on it.

Do your film.

Then film the reaction of people discovering what you did.

Like running on Raisin Bran Crunch and Grape Nuts.

mudder 4 sho wrote:

I ran ina dual meet on a dirt track, carried about a lb. of mud on each shoe to a 1:58.4 my senior year. I won. My friend's mom said I must be a "mudder." I had no idea at the time it was a horse racing term!

Yes it was, and you did great !

One of the schools in my conference in high school had a grass track. This was late 70’s/early 80’s, was really comfortable to run on but I can’t recall what (if any) effect it had on times. There were a couple of clay tracks but most of our rivals had dirt tracks. We pretty much only saw artificial surfaces at invitationals that were held at colleges or bigger high schools near LA.

My home track was dirt and the day before a meet coach would drag a screen around behind his truck and then we would walk the track 8-10 abreast picking out the loose rocks. Then came the chalking contraption to mark the lanes. Two people pulling and a person behind each bucket tapping it with a stick to keep the flow even.