Sweet 1600 Star Posts (2023)

Story

Hit the track at the Trumansburg school for a couple of speedy walking miles. I walked in Lane 4 and found it interesting how my mind registers a mile in laps and was surprised by how much ‘shorter’ a mile felt in that lane.

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Must have been speedy to cause perturbations in space and time. :slight_smile: Four laps in Lane 4 would be 92 meters longer than 1600, about the length of the straightaway. When you come to Trackapalooza, you’ll see how the 200m and 400m have markings that indicate the staggered starts to account for the difference in lane distances.

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

I do know about the staggered starting positions. I’ve watched a little bit of track on TV. Don’t runners collapse into fewer lanes in the longer distances? I was looking at the distance between the different start positions and trying to eyeball if my laps were making sense.

Thanks for the link! I was planning to search for this later. I thought I would test out the different lanes in future Sweet 1600s.

Yes, in the longer distances, there are several different approaches to evening out the distance. Most common is a waterfall start where there’s a slightly curved start line so the runners on the outside of the track get a foot or two ahead to compensate for the extra distance they have to cover to get to Lane 1. Some races (when there are a lot of runners) instead do a box start where half the race starts well ahead but has to stay in Lane 4 or greater for part of the way around before cutting in. It’s all quite interesting at an intellectual level.

Story

I walked 2 miles on the Cornell track this morning, completing laps in lane 8. I’m looking forward to learning all about track at the meet this weekend. Are the races more than ten laps?!! If so, I may need to take off my shoes and socks to count laps. :grimacing:

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Story

Jamie and I were running on the Boulder Creek Path this morning and came across this track that must be part of the University of Colorado, Boulder. We couldn’t resist getting credit for a Sweet16 run but only did one mile here as the trail was much more interesting.

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Story

I hit the Cornell track for a Sweet 1600 on my walk from PT to my office. It was close to noon, yet I still had the whole track to myself.

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Story

Wedged the 1600 run into my long bike ride day. It was sunny and hot with no wind, but there were a few other folks on the track so we suffered together. I biked around the track 2 full times until I found the entrance :sweat_smile::sweat_smile:. Penultimate run down !!! And got to bike past sunflowers on my way home

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Story

I’m so glad we found it our local high school keeps the track open. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: Matt and I did a lovely sunny walk :heavy_check_mark::receipt:

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Story

After too much sitting this morning, I decided to take a walk around my building … which morphed into walking slightly further down campus than I intended … which brought me to the track … which made me decide to walk a Sweet 1600.

I start my Garmin, and the whole time I am watching the dark clouds in the distance. I swear the sky directly above the track was mostly clear. I thought about taking a pano but then heard thunder in the distance. I moved from lane 8 to 1 so that I would have less distance to cover to get to the gate. I thought it was strange that I didn’t get a lap alert but was focused on getting back to my building.

As it turns out, my Garmin doesn’t track distance when you start a YOGA activity. :woman_facepalming:t2: I logged a 15 minute mile in Webscorer. I’m willing to fight anyone who wants to challenge the ‘speedy’ mile I logged without a GPS file to back it up! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Story

We are on a family trip to Norway, and today was spent in Bergen. We took the funicular up to the local hilltop with a view of the town and waterfront. On the hike back down, we came across a wonderful six lane track nestled into the side of the hill, surrounded by pine trees with views of the bay and the surrounding peaks. Oliver, Ben, and I went for an impromptu sweet 1600 in the cool, misting rain of the day while Rebecca, ever the wisest, settled for her role as photographer. Afterwards we finished walking back to town and then had a fine lunch at the old meat market.




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I love this…I love how you (and others) just happen upon a track and right then decide to bust out an impromptu Sweet 1600. We’re definitely runners at heart. :heart:

Looks like a day well spent and I bet those beers were good! Enjoy the rest of your trip!

I have to drop a kid at IC for camp. I was hoping to get a Sweet 1600 in, but …

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Story

I raced a mile today at a Triple Cities Runners Club meet in Endicott. When I arrived at the track I did my standard warm up: 2 miles (done on the track to get two 1600s), then changed into spikes to do 4 strides.

The race went off and one runner immediately went to the lead. I negotiated the initial congestion and situated myself in second place, right on the heels of the leader. Lap 1 was fast (about 1:12 through 409 meters, which is 4:43 pace), but the pace slowed on laps 2 and 3. We hit 809 and 1209 in about 2:31 and 3:47. It would have been nice to run a bit faster, but I wanted to win this race so I wasn’t going to push the pace and let anyone draft off me. With 300 meters to go, I made my move into the lead and kicked the rest of the way to win in 4:54 (at least that’s what my watch said when I stopped it; I might have to adjust my time once the official results are posted).

After watching the other races and cheering on some friends, I ran another 8 laps to bring my Sweet 1600 total to 5 for the day and 116 for the year.

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I keep choosing hot days to knock off challenge courses, and today (on my vacation) was no exception! I haven’t run a 1600 since the fall when @adamengst coached indoor track, so I had lowered expectations. That, and the 81 degree temps with 84% humidity and 17 mph winds made for an interesting workout :woozy_face:.

With four courses to go and being in Cape Cod for the week, the only one I could take on was the 1600, so I set out to the local high school track:

It was a beautiful, hot, breezy day. The first 200 meters of each lap had the wind at my back, so the second 200 was directly into it. I was very happy to have rounded the final lap, and to check that one off my list!

I proudly wore my favorite Ithaca swag, courtesy of the @finger-lakes-running.

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Story

Well, since a cell experiment is dragging me into the lab every single day, I decided to get a Sweet 1600 done on the Cornell track today. I headed over to the track while instruments were in the autoclave, got my mile, and came back to remove the stuff from the autoclave.

Here is a picture of my fed and hopefully happy cells in their ‘home’.

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Story

Finally got to run on our home track (last year it was under construction) and in my new Hokas.

4 miles of speed work and a 1 mile cool down walk with my girls. @DamianClemons may have bribed them with ice cream.


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Story

I had an extra day off from work after returning last night from a short vacation. The William S. Rogers High School track in Newport, Rhode Island, was closed for construction so I was out of luck on Challenge efforts for a few days. (But got to run some other amazing routes!)

(That cross fence would make for an interesting steeple chase!)

50k on a track has been on my bipedal bucket list for awhile so why not head up to Lansing High to bang out 125 laps around the rubber?

After unexpectedly calling AAA to replace my car battery I got a late start, meaning I had about 4:30 available to run 50k. I started too fast when low 8-minute pace felt like a breeze, crashed around mile 20, and jogged my way to 26.2 (105 laps) with a plan B to take a short break and gutting out how ever many more miles I had time for. As soon as I stopped I felt sick to the stomach and light headed and went with plan C — tossing in the towel to DNF my intended fun run. Since it wasn’t super hot or humid I’m guessing I’m not totally recovered from Many On the Genny + vacation, and maybe didn’t eat enough salt. At least it’s 26 more miles for the Challenge.

Logistics: The Lansing HS track is reliably open to the public and was near empty the whole time, save one runner and a two landscapers. I made up my own small AS on the ground by the side of the track and had a running water bathroom close by. I placed the “staging area” as close to the bathroom as possible so I could stop between full miles as needed and not have to take many extra steps. After the run took like 13 minutes to enter in all my split times into Webscorer.

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This certainly is a challenge!! Sounds more like torture to me, but great job!

Story

I literally had a crappy morning! :cow2::poop:

But there’s nothing like a Sweet 1600 to improve one’s moooooooood.

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