This
is looking toward the west and north. On the far left is Track Coach, Louie
Quintana who had just blown off the pile of loose rubber that has built up at
this end of the track. You can see he has started spraypainting a refreshed
mark for the start lines and plans to do the same thing to the lane lines. This
is all the stop-gap efforts he can make right now as he tries to return Allan
Hancock to Junior College prominence. The huge water stains give an indication
of the abuse this track takes every night. And note there are members of the
community who continue to use this no matter what the condition.  |
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This is the surface around most of the track, lane lines barely visible, cracks in the rubber asphalt surface. |
On the opposite side of the track, the cracking is worse though the lane lines are move visible. |
You can see the ple of rubber in the grass. Up until a couple of days before this, that was sitting on top of the track surface. |
While this is in terrible condition, this damage is a rebirth of the damage
that existed here in the 1980's. It was still dangerous to run on then--I ran
on it almost every night and memorized the dangerous cracks. Somewhere between
then, some serious work was done to resurface this track because the damage
is in different places. This is actually better than it was in 1985. The shabby
pole vault pit cover has always been there--but back then an actual 18 foot
vaulter (when there were less than a dozen of them) trained here along with
some good multi-event athletes and throwers. I have actually run in many meets
on this track, when it was in that bad condition (though the lane lines were
at least available)--there wasn't much else in the area. Since I was in my athletic
prime at the time, many of my best times were set on this track. They also had
several Junior College State Champions between Track and Cross Country. You
can see it will take more than the efforts of one hard working track coach with
a spray paint can to revive this facility. He tells me they actually have plans
to move the track facilities across College Drive, west to the field across
the street. When they do , Allan Hancock will finally get the facilities this
has not been in almost 30 years.