under a rock
Ashley... Good luck on finding a decent track to run on in Gastonia. I think all of the schools just have asphalt paved tracks instead of the rubberized (or whatever you call it) ones like at Myers Park HS where they had the track meet in Charlotte last week.
I haven't seen them all so if you do find a good one let me know, but I went out to Forestview HS just a couple weeks ago thinking they'd have a good one if anybody did, but it was just asphalt and you couldn't access it either because it's part of the football stadium.
You can get onto the track at Grier Middle School (by the library) anytime but it's asphalt.
Richard Hefner Past Race Results (Athlinks)
I was looking for a track too, but no luck finding an actual marked track around Gastonia, should try that Grier Middle school.
Richard, have you tried Southpoint High (in Belmont) and not sure why Ashbrook high has no access, its not like there's a stardum in there.
I am bad with pacing and want to run some intervals at 5K-10K pace on a marked track to get used to the pace. Last race at Summer Breeze went out too fast with 7:35 first mile and had a 8:20 second mile, atleast finished with 8:38 for the final 1.1 (I think this works out to 7:45 pace) so need to work on that second mile.
Who knew there would be 3 of us from Gastonia here on RA.
Ashley, you seem to have simialr speed to me (my goal is a 23 min 5k as well be year end). Should try to get together for either a saturday run with Richard at Martha Rivers park, or where I run most of the time at Gastonia Greenway. Or if you find a track, speed work where we push each other would be nice, mostly Richard will be our pace setter I guess.
I'm up for just about anything that will get a few runners together in Gastonia! My only problem with Saturday is I couldn't do a morning run because I'm always at a race Saturday morning, but Saturday evening will work for me.
As for pacing, let's keep it at a pace that's slow enough so everybody can keep up. We could make the group runs "easy" runs and run at maybe 10-minute miles if that's comfortable for everybody. I think we're just talking about me, Ashley, and Shashi, and maybe when and if we add more people we could branch out to different paces. My wife Linda couldn't keep up at a 10-minute pace so maybe if somebody joins us who is more her speed we could branch out like that, and the same goes for people wanting to run faster.
Ashley and I talked just a bit about starting a running club in Gastonia and that's something I'd love to do. There are really a lot of people who run but without a running store or any type of organized running group it seems like every man for himself out there. There are some great places to run (e.g. Martha Rivers Park and the greenway) and with 1 or 2 scheduled group runs each week it would be a great place to start.