It's Valentine's Day and that got us thinking about some of the stuff we love about indoors track. Here are seven things we love.
1. The weather! At this point in the season we are complaining about the weather outside but that is because we are spoiled and forget we are running indoors. It was just a couple months ago we were freezing our hands in XC and we are just weeks away from sweating bullets outdoors. Let's just enjoy the climate controlled indoors for a few more days.
2. The noise! Nothing is quite as hype as the WHOOOOOPPPP you get to hear indoors. Of course, you want to be on the right side of the cheers.
3. The facilities! We are truly spoiled in VA. There are more indoor tracks (200m or longer) here than any other state and we also have more banked tracks than any other state by our count. We are truly spoiled.
4. The mega meets! During XC and outdoors everyone runs in different places and at different times but during indoors you can be a good chunk of all the athletes in the state are either at VA Beach, Liberty, or VMI. It's way easier to get competition indoors.
5. The "off events"! There's just so many rumors and urban legends why we run the 55, 300, 500, and 1K and we are here for it. No matter why we run them still today it is a nice change of pace and allows us and a few other states to lead the country in some events year after year.
6. The length of the season! XC is really only two months long and outdoor track really only lasts three months while indoors is a whopping four months long stretching December, January, February, and March. It even has a nice break built in with the winter break.
7. The 4x2! This event is mayhem and you can't deny you love it too. Picture athletes running faster than a 4x1 doing a 4x8 exchange all while the track is half the size of an outdoor track.