Pace Setter : April 2025

Indoor Track: Love it or Hate it?

INDOOR TRACK: LOVE IT OR HATE IT?  
By Mark Mindel

I have had a love/ hate relationship with indoor track going back to 1970 when I first ran indoor at Union College. We had a dirt track surrounding the basketball court where Jimmy Tedisco starred. It’s the same facility that is used today for high school Tri County Indoor Track League meets, although now it at least has a rough tartan surface.

I was a 2:00 flat high school half miler at Niskayuna (we ran 880 yards, slightly longer than today’s 800 meters and we didn’t have an indoor program until after I graduated) but I immediately took to the shorter indoor tracks and being able to gather momentum by leaning into the turns. 

I wound up running 1:55 indoors at Union, a time I never matched in outdoor track.
 

 

When I began coaching Cross Country, Indoor, and Outdoor at Bishop Gibbons and Bishop Maginn in the mid 1970’s, I really became enamored with indoor.

The TCITL league had about 20 schools back then (currently we have 55) and we competed primarily at Union College and the Washington Avenue Armory in Albany (sharing time with the Albany Patroons).

We also had meets at R.P.I. and Williams College and each track had its own idiosyncrasies: RPI with its tunnel; at Williams the shot put circle and pole vault pit were in the same place!

We even had one meet at Guptill’s Roller Skate Arena ~ talk about short tracks and tight turns! 

But if you’ve never run an indoor track event or attended an indoor track meet (we call it ‘organized chaos’ for a reason!) you’ve missed something very unique ~ the first time you run a mile race indoor your lungs will burn, and you’ll probably get bumped by several runners fighting into that first turn!

But I wouldn’t give up indoor track for anything. I ran it for four years and coached it for another 30 years and currently officiate approximately 25 indoor meets a year for the TCITL.
 

Which brings us to something incredible that happened in the beginning of February this year.

In an incredible span of six days, five NEW WORLD RECORDS were set in indoor track:

On Feb 8: the USA's Yared Nuguse broke the indoor mile record with a fast 3:46.63 at the Millrose Games at the Armory in NYC. In the same meet USA's hit 7:22.91 for the indoor World Record 3k. Grant Fisher

And even in defeat, USA's Cole Hocker’s 7:23.14, second to Fisher in the Millrose 3k was under the old WR as was the USA's Hobbs Kessler, 3:46.90 second place finish to Nuguse in the Millrose Mile. 

Those were all incredible races by the new middle distance stars for the United States. 

Remember at the Paris Olympics the U.S. showed its new middle distance prowess with a powerful 1-3-5 finish by Hocker, Nuguse, and Kessler in the 1500m as well as Grant Fisher grabbing bronze at the Olympic 5k and 10k.

Feb 13:  Just five days later, Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen shattered Nuguse's indoor mile record blasting a 3:45.14 in Lievin, France while also topping his own indoor 1500m enroute in 3:29.63. Two world records in one race!

Feb 14:  The next day Fisher popped a new WR 12:44.09 in the 5k at a meet at Boston University.
 

And for good measure, on the roads, Feb 16, Uganda's Jacob Kiplomi set a new Half Marathon record in 56:41 in Barcelona, Spain!

That’s six new World Records in eight days. We may never see anything like that again!