lane etiquette

Phil Sports – Safety First – Joggers please stay in lane 5 to 8 at all athletic tracks (rev 3)

PRIORITY FOR TRACK USE AT PHIL SPORTS

pasig-joggers.jpg
  • National Athletes Track and Field
  • National Athletes
  • Collegiate Athletes Track and Field
  • General Public (Joggers, varsity other sports, walkers etc..)

Common sense needs to be applied and national coaches will need to instruct and direct the use of oval emphasizing track etiquette. Ultra Pasig Joggers

On Saturday night I had a very near run in with a jogger. I was doing 150s at Philippines Sports Complex (Ultra) in 16s/11s 100m pace. Me and my training partner were using lane 1 and 2 and our friends cleared lane 1 and 2 telling the joggers we were using these lanes (fast lanes) for sprints. Everyone hopped out of the lane. When we rounded the curve and came half way down the strait I notice one jogger who had earlier been told to clear the track  by my friend had made his way back between lane 1 and 2 despite being told earlier to clear the lanes.
My friend had to ease down in the rep as the jogger was half way between our lanes, i yelled track and lane 1 3 times and my friend waved to him as he was wearing head phones. He acted like he didn’t hear me when he was wearing his head phones. In fact to my horror he moved from the outside to right in my lane. I had to slam the breaks down at top speed and was very lucky i didn’t rip my ham string. Even though he claimed he didn’t hear me “I didn’t know, I didn’t know” he clearly could hear me when i started screaming and cursing bad language at him because I’m lucky i didn’t get injured.
After this I filed an incident report to security.
The management at the track had not placed the fast lanes 1-4 and joggers stay in lane 5-8 lanes sign for some time. This has put the safety of the athletes highly at risk and Saturdays incident was a pure of example of what could happen as a result if instructions are not being followed.
Also the board with the rules on it at Ultra tells the joggers “stay in your designated lanes”. How are they supposed to know which lanes these are when management does not specify this?
I definitely expect the sign to be up their today when I head to ultra, i will be really annoyed if it isn’t.
i have nothing against joggers using the oval they have as much a right to work out as everyone else. However safety must come first. This is not only for the safety of the fast runners but also for the safety of the joggers. Joggers too are trying to stay fit but everybody safety should not be compromised because of this. When the signage goes back up there is no excuse to not follow the rules. I had a think about why the joggers are assigned the outside lanes before and the reason is this. If the fast runners are assigned outside lanes that means the joggers will have to walk past sprinters to get to their respective lanes, because its much safer for faster runners to pass by joggers to get to the inside lanes.