Why 1500m instead of 1600

Board List Missouri Topic. Back to Topic List. Create New Topic. Create New Poll. Joined: Sep Posts: I know that many will disagree with me here, but I have believed for a long time that in high school track we should make the move from running the m to the m.

Why do I believe this? For a couple of reasons. First, U. I think we should be doing the same event that college and the pros run. I actually also believe this for switching the m hurdles to the m hurdles and moving from the m to m as well. For me having run both distances, I really liked running the m. Why don't we go to meter tracks? That would seem to make it much easier to accomodate ALL the field events inside the oval plus gentler turns for the long sprinters and distance runners.

This is one of those big issues that has never--as far as I know--really been resolved. Prior to the s, most tracks in the US and Britain were yards in size, although it was nowhere near as standard then as in the 20th century and some well-known tracks were of quite odd and oversize measure. To my mind, the now-standard metric distances are a kind of bastardization of the standard imperial distances.

The , , , and are obviously nearly exactly "like" the familiar , , , and yard distances. The real question is: if and meters makes "sense" why not go to ? No one really has an answer for that IF one was starting from scratch, "logic" would suggest metric distances of, say, , , , , , , , and 10, On a m track, all this would make great sense, but the last m track was junked a long time ago.

As I and a few others have stated, the is an odd and ugly distance--one with no real historical logic and no public appeal in the US, at least. It's ugly, but it's an ugly distance we're stuck with. I read somewhere a long time ago forgot the source that continental tracks mostly French were m, which would lend some rational for a m. This may be urban legend. All distance events contested are somewhat arbitrary, classic being the marathon distance from Windsor Castle to the Oly stadium, so the children royal could watch the start.

Since I think the m should be changed to m, in a logic sense. If you want a decently good time average on a junior high track team that would be about Average on a high school team: Varsity high school: about Outstanding time for your age: around In track running, the m race became the standard middle distance race in Europe in the late 19th century, and has been the standard distance in the Olympic Games since Olympic-size pools are 50 meters in length, so it takes 30 laps to reach 1, meters, which is 0.