Weird Track

Last night I went and ran on the local track for the first time and noticed something weird - it was a strange shape.

I ran the half a mile or so from the house to the track and set off on a couple of warm up laps. As I rounded the first corner I thought to myself that the distance seemed short and the turn was tighter than I remembered. I brushed it off as I haven't been on a track in months and I was just jogging at this stage. I completed my first warm up lap and couldn't get it out of my head that the track just seemed short. I decided to check the distance of the track - surely they wouldn't make a Middle School track that wasn't 400m would they?

I finished my second warm up lap and my Garmin measured the distance to be 0.24 or 0.25 miles - so it wasn't short after all. I was now warm and ready to go, so when I passed the finish line I set off on the first of my three 800m repeats. I rounded the first turn and it just felt wrong, it was much to tight. Before I knew it, I was in to the back straight. I looked for the relay boxes and couldn't find them, so I had no idea what my first 100m split was (not that I could see my watch with the glare of the sun and my sunglasses!). I passed 200m and in to the other turn, again it just felt weird... what was wrong with this track?

I completed my first 800m repeat in 2:54. I had been distracted by the strange track and not being able to see my splits and had gone much to fast. I jogged my recovery lap and set off on another 800m repeat. By 400m, I wasn't surprised to find I was out of energy. That first 800m had been too fast, and I was going to pay for it. My second 800m was 3:04 and the third 3:08 - consistently inconsistent, and very frustrating.

I jogged home but couldn't get the shape of the track off of my mind. Today, I pulled up Google Maps and looked at the track that I used to run on last year (near the old house) and the track that I ran on yesterday. There doesn't appear to be a huge difference, but there is a slight difference - the weird track has slightly longer straights and slightly tighter turns. I have tried to illustrate the differences below, but even that isn't easy!

This is the 'weird' track

This is the 'regular shape' track

After writing this blog entry, I am fairly certain I am not making all of this up and that the track really is a different shape - and that was what I wanted to achieve!

I have no problem using this strange track - it is better than no track at all for sure! Hopefully the next time I run on it I will be thinking about my pace instead of the shape of the track and I'll have a better workout.