Miele Man

Has anyone here ridden a road bike with either 25mm or 28mm tires, on an outdoor running track that has the resilient surface? Just wondering if such a track can be used for bicycle riding.

Thank you and cheers

caloso

You could, but as the parent of a high school track athlete, I'd ask you not to. There are millions of miles of roads available to us, tracks are relatively scarce. Leave them to the runners.

delbiker1 

Go to the source, owner/management, and ask them. My guess, the answer is: "No Bikes Allowed."

caloso

Shoot. I donated a couple of hundred dollars to the track at my daughter's high school when she was only in kindergarten. Took that long to fundraise and build.

Miele Man

Thanks people. I was thinking that perhaps the surface of a resilient running track was too fragile for a bicycle with narrow tires. I used to do laps on an asphalt paved outdoor running track years ago. It was a great place to take a bike for a test ride or to help diagnose certain problems where you could concentrate wholly on the problem and not have to worry about traffic. It was also a great place to teach people bicycle handling courses.

Cheers

Ironfish653

If there’s a community college near you, those are good for test & tune rides. Big parking lots, low-speed roadways, and pretty much deserted on weekends.
I took my BRC at one of the TCC campuses, ant the handling course was painted on one of the parking lots; I’d bring my new bikes out there on “off” weekends to do handling drills.

Koyote

I can't imagine many things more boring than riding my bike around a running track.

rustystrings61 

Large church parking anytime other than Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights are awesome for that purpose. I used to always test newly-built bikes riding laps around the fancy parking lot of the wealthiest Presbyterian church here, and I taught my kids to ride in the parking lot of the "establishment" Baptist church that was at the end of our street.

Doug64

canklecat

I've done a few laps running around the local junior high school's new track. The synthetic rubber is remarkably rough and hard, not at all what I was expecting. I definitely would not want to fall on that kind of track material -- to the touch it feels like a really hard, rough Scotch-Brite pad for scrubbing pots and pans.

It's a good compromise for both spiked running shoes and all purpose running flats without spikes, such as the adidas Adizero Takumi Sen 6 or earlier versions of the Takumi Sen. Those have hard rubber sorta-spikes for good grip on oval tracks over 800m or longer races. And the grip wasn't bad on my road running shoes, although I'm so slow I'm in no danger of sliding off any track.

I suspect a bike would feel sluggish on that rough synthetic track material compared with smooth asphalt and other pavement. It would probably feel comparable to riding on the least-bad chipseal I've ridden, which is still sluggish compared with good asphalt.

I'd bet the track would wear out the tires quicker rather than vice versa. But falling could damage the track if the pedals, etc, gouged the track surface. Just nicking the track with a pedal strike on a fast turn would probably gouge the track.

Last time I visited that track a young woman was walking her dog on the new track -- clockwise, in the inside lane. For the cyclist, that's the runner's equivalent to encountering salmon ninjas at night. I felt kinda bad for the dog. It probably had sore paw pads after walking laps on that rough surface.

There are some huge parking lots and industrial parks nearby with few or no cars at night and on weekends. If I wanted to ride a solo crit type course, I'd go there.

skidder

What cankle cat mentions just above - rough surface that you would not want to fall on - plus you'll notice you're a lot slower due to the flexible surface of the track interfacing with the flexible surface of your bicycle's tires. These days all the schools that have them lock them up after school is out for the day. The nly way you can access them is to pay a fee to get a 'permit' for use (typical way things are done here in California these days).

Old 'asphalt' tracks. I remember those when I was on the track team at a local community college. They were a rubberized asphalt but still felt as hard as just plain asphalt when you ran on them with spiked track shoes. I'm glad those are obsolete.

I'd rather go back to the dirt, crushed brick, and crushed granite tracks from my high school days. They would be perfect for riding a bicycle, especially if you want to skid in the corners on MTB or BMX-style bicycles.