Laying out track

I've got to lay out a new race track at a school, so anybody have any tricks to lay it out? I know about how wide the lanes got to be and that it smallest lane should be 400 meters long. But other than that I'm a little lost. Thanks in advance guys

Will they be running high school track meets at this location?

Well no but the track team will be training there and it will be around the fooball field. So I want it look and be right because it will be seen and used a lot. They could hold track meets but we didn't talk about while I was there.

The striping and stenciling is probably 20% of the job. That is assuming you have plenty of experience, several stripers and helpers. You will need to purchase the numbers for the lane lines if you don't have them already. You normally wouldn't use striping paint. I wouldn't know where to start as far as the layout of the track goes. There is no way someone can explain to you how to layout a track on a forum like this. Most tracks require a certified engineer to put down the reference points for the lane lines, event start and stops, exchange zones, hurdle locations, stagger marks, etc. Each track can have its very own unique set of markings due to the size of the two curves. If the track doesn't need to be certified, you might muddle through the layout with the help of some websites, but you may just want to locate a company to do the layout for you and you do the painting. I trust you gave then a very healthy estimate. Good luck with the project.

It was rather healthy, I've done work for the school before so that helped. They told me that they basically just want the lanes down, it'll be painted on asphalt so I think traffic paint will be just fine. And after talking with them today we are only going to paint 4 lanes so the scope of the work is a little less than I originally thought.

A piece of cake! Just find your radius for each curve and the rest is down hill.

Has an engineer or surveyor installed markers, or monuments at each end of the track so you can pivot out from each hub to mark your lanes in the corners, or in other words, to at least make sure the asphalt was properly laid out to accept proper striping layout in the future? You don't want to layout a running track with a fiberglass tape measure and then find out they are going to hold a big official high school track meet... it will likely not pass inspection (hopefully it wouldn't be inspected after someone broke a record).

Agree with Markings #1

we just finish one at a elementary school, only three lanes, it went pretty quiick, we only layout the straight part of one, we just follow the edge at the radious, it came out great. we have 14 more to do for the same contractor. my striper used two pointers one for the straight, the other one for the radious, by the time i start layout and he stripe it it took us a total of 40 minutes to finish it. i know that a lot of people here dont beleive in pointers, but for us they work great perfect straight lines every time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5Tkf52-tgw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bm74oAJB40

i hope those videos help allamericanstriping