Idontknow wrote:
one lap is a 400 meter race right?
2 laps is a 800 meter race right?
4 laps is a 1600 meters.....so why is it 100 meters short?
If I said to you let's race four laps....and your response was ok but let's shorten it by 100 meters....I would say for what? ....so can someone please explain the logic of running 4 laps 100 meters short?
You could just as easily ask why we run the 5000m or 10000m, which first appeared in the Olympics in 2012. Why don't we run the 4800 or 5200m?
Most runners, especially the ones in those metric countries, are lazy. They gladly run a shorter distance if given the opportunity.
The 1500 was originally 4 laps of a standard 375 meter track. Since the conversion to 400 meters, runners have still found it mighty convenient to get splits at .9375, 1.875 and 2.8125 laps.
If you look closely at quality IAAF-standard tracks, you will see those split locations clearly marked along the first turn. Most people don't notice them among the exchange zones and hurdle marks.
We had a 440 yard track when I was in high school. We ran a REAL mile.
Always Right wrote:
Are you guys even reading the previous posts? The 1500m is just a political compromise for the international scene to have something close to the mile!!
That's it! It's the only answer it's the METRIC MILE the subjective equivelant of the MILE.
The mile is a unit of measure in the standard system. Dating back to Queen Elizabeth I. It became an amazingly popular distance and thus spawned the 1500 when an equivelant was need (The closest rounded number).
This isn't hard if you research it people...
There are no 500m tracks, nothing to do with straight aways. ALL THAT MATTERS IS THE RELATION OF DISTANCE TO THE MILE.
The metric mile should be the 2,000m
Idontknow said: if they where not 400 meters what where they?
tracks have over the years been a variety of distances and the idea that all running tracks should be the same size is only a fairly recent innovation. but worlds like "time" and "recent" refer to the history of our sport rather than within the memory of some random person. the word stadium for example comes from the Greek stade, a unit of measure equal to approximately 600 feet, which was the length of the races at the ancient Greek olympic games. the track at Cambridge University in England was three laps to a mile, and they ran round anti-clockwise until 1947 when the track was relaid. the Polo Grounds in New York where, in 1881, Lon Myers set a world record for 880 yards was a 640 yard track and in 1884 he set another WR for 880 yards in Birmingham in England where the track was 501 yards. the track in Milan where Rudolf Harbig set his first world record was 500m while the track in Rome where, in 1908, Emilio Lunghi set a world record for 1000m was, inexplicably, 370.80 metres. if you have ever seen the film Chariots of Fire you might know that it is set at the time of the 1924 Olympics held in Stade Colombes in Paris, where there was a 500m track. as recently as 1953 Mal Whitfield set a world record for 1000m at Eskilstuna in Finland on a track that was 427 metres per lap.
the world has not always been the way it is now.
cheers.