Commentary: Nowhere to run

The other night I was out on a run in San Jose, California. I was trying to find a track to run on, which is a common problem for me when I’m on the road. I hadn’t found a track in this part of town, so I set about running laps around a soccer field. After a few laps, I heard someone yelling at me from the next field over. I couldn’t make it out at first, but I could tell he was not happy with me. On my next lap, I sauntered over to the arm-flapping man and asked, what was up.

“You can’t run here!” he complained. “This is a soccer field.”

‘Uh hugh,’ I thought to myself.

He continued on, “You can’t run here. Go to a track.”

The natural question that came to me immediately was ‘why’, but instead I quite politely asked, “is there a track around here somewhere?”

Without missing a beat he offered, “No. But you can’t run here.”

I’ve been struggling with this for awhile. It seems to me that more and more places are somehow becoming off-limits to runners. Not in the sense that there are signs that say “no running” but in other more subtle ways: like fences.

In my neck of the woods, I’ve noticed that all of our high schools, for example, have been locking up their football stadiums - and thus - their running tracks. It seems to have started when the schools started upgrading their stadiums to put in artificial turf on the football fields. Low and behold, when the new fake grass went in, fences went up and locks were on those fences.

It’s not only an Oregon problem. I travel to San Jose extensively and I’ve found the same problem there. Practically all of the tracks are locked up tight as prisons. Even the cruddy dirt tracks. I did finally find a track that has no fences, so I go there, but it’s all the way across the valley from where I normally stay when I’m in town. That’s what had led me to the trek to the soccer fields the other night.

In addition to the locks, I’ve also noticed that when they are open, other groups seem to be quite protective of their time there. Like the soccer coach in San Jose, I’ve met angry football coaches, band directors, and even. . . track coaches. I understand the need to stay out of the way of organized groups, but when a track coach asks “why you’re running on his track” it makes me wonder what’s going on.

At my former local high-school track – I can’t go there anymore – it was the soccer players that didn’t like me there. I looked into this and found that the local soccer club paid for a portion of the stadium’s construction. So I guess they feel that they own a piece of it. But, as a tax paying home-owner, don’t I own a piece too? Maybe a bigger piece based on my property tax bill.

I understand the need for securing property and keeping people safe. But I have a problem with the exclusionary trend I’m seeing. Runners need access to tracks to practice our sport. And these circular rubber surfaces around the soccer fields are, in fact, made for running. If they are being reserved for the 3 months of the year that the high school track team uses them that seems like a waste of a very expensive running surface.

We as runners need to stay on top of this trend and question people that are kicking us to the curb. It’s important that it doesn’t become common practice to exclude runners from running on running tracks, if you see my point.

After leaving the soccer field the other night, I ran back to my car. Before getting in and driving away, I decided to do some drills in the empty parking lot. There wasn’t a car in sight. I got about half-way through and a security vehicle drove up. “You can’t run here” he started. I just shook my head and left.