Location of "fast" indoor tracks in the USA

[26mi235]

Almost always tight turns matter. The larger the track, the fewer the number of turns per lap, of course. The correction factor for the oversized tracks is essentially driven by the size of those tracks weighted implicitly by the athletics marks used in computing the correction, and that means about 300 meters. A couple of the sites account for a substantial number of the marks and an even higher proportion of quality marks, and they are 300 (SPIRE, Iowa State) or 307 meters (Washington), except Notre Dame (320).

What makes a bigger difference is that these facilities is that they have room and often spectator support that makes them better sites to hold big meets and these meets attract large groups of quality competitors. It would be the height of idiocy not to use these facilities for qualification purposes; probably the stupidest idea that I can think of being proposed, and that takes some doing. The Big Ten has been using the SPIRE facility for the Big Ten meet the last three or four years and the people involved that I have talked with really like it. First, it allows the mens and womens meets to be held at the same time rather than at two different sites. Second, there is room for fans and the track quality is good and the support for field events is better than at most (almost all) indoor facilities. Of course, the quality of the top 200m banked tracks is similar (e.g., Texas A&M, Arkansas).

[aaronk]

My main (sole?) argument against OT's is that whatever fast times are run there do NOT count on official lists or for any kind of records!

So you might have some athletes (or teams, in the case of 4X800's or DMR's) who run ALL their fast times on OT's and are nowhere to be found on A-T lists---at least official ones!

Best (worst??) example is Allie Ostrander.
In her frosh year last year, she ran two INdoor races---an 8:54 3K and a 15:21 5K (behind Kim Conley's 15:09)---both on Seattle's OT!

So if you look at the official A-T INdoor Collegiate list, Ostrander is invisable---as if she'd never run INdoors!!

Yet if she'd run those times on 200 meter tracks, her 3000 would be ranked 8th A-T Collegiate (INdoors), and that 5000 would be 6th A-T Collegiate!!

But she's not on either official list!!

[exdrake]

The horror!

Omission alert: Aaronk forgot to mention...he has a blog!!

[26mi235]

Aaron, if you have a list that in incomplete do not lay it to such reasons, keep in on a secondary list, or give it an asterisk. However, your assertion that they do not appear is simply flawed to the core. If I want a list I go look at T&FNews, as do most people here. You will find lists like these:

http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/index.php/tafn-lists?list_id=1&sex_id=W&yyear=2016

It includes the aforementioned 8:54

Oversized Track:

8:54.27		***Allie Ostrander (Boise)	Husky Cl	02/13
8:57.13		Seidel	Meyo Inv	02/06
8:57.78		Paquette	Music City Chall	02/13
8:59.44		O’Connor	Allendale	01/22
9:01.25		Finn	Meyo Inv	02/06
9:01.31		Kim Conley (NBal)	UW Preview	01/16
9:03.22		Mel Lawrence (Ois)	Husky Cl	02/13
9:03.59		Thackery’	Husky Cl	02/13
9:04.38		Boyle	Meyo Inv	02/06
9:04.46		Chelsea Sodaro (Sauc)	Music City Chall	02/13

By the way, the top 47 OT marks were at the aforementioned Washington (Dempsey)/SPIRE/Iowa State tracks, so they are pretty comparable, which kills your argument about the lack of comparability across indoor marks (range from 300 to 307 meters).