Indoor and outdoor track are not the same sport
August 1, 2026 路 6 min read
Every winter the same conversation happens. An athlete runs an indoor 200, sees a number slower than the one they ran in May, and quietly concludes they have gone backwards.
Usually they have not. The two races are run on different geometry.
The track is half the size
A standard outdoor track is 400m round, with eight or nine lanes and two long straights. A standard indoor track is 200m. Some older facilities are 300m, and plenty of them are odd sizes that predate any standard.
Halving the lap does not just halve the straights. It doubles the number of turns you run and tightens the radius of every one of them. A 200m indoors is run almost entirely on a curve, on a bend far tighter than anything outdoors. A 400m indoors is four of those turns instead of two gentle ones.
Turning costs you speed. You cannot lean into a tight bend and hold the same line as you would on a wide outdoor curve, and the faster you are the more it costs you.
Banked and flat are different races
Indoor tracks come in two kinds. Banked tracks tilt the turns upward so the runner can carry speed through them. Flat tracks do not.
They are not comparable. The same athlete on the same day will run a different 200 on a banked track than a flat one, and the gap grows as the event gets shorter and faster. When you record an indoor sprint, note which kind of track it was. Anyone who knows the sport will ask.
Some events only exist in one season
This confuses people who arrive from other sports, where the same game is played all year.
Indoors only:
- 60m, and 55m at many high school meets
- 60m hurdles
- 500m, 600m, 1000m, and the mile as a championship event
- Weight throw
- Pentathlon for women, heptathlon for men
Outdoors only:
- 100m and 200m as the short sprints
- 100m and 110m hurdles, and the 400m hurdles
- Steeplechase
- Discus, javelin and hammer
- Heptathlon for women, decathlon for men
So a 60m best has no outdoor equivalent, and a hammer thrower has no indoor version of their event. That is normal, and coaches read it correctly.
There is no wind indoors
Wind readings do not exist indoors, because there is no meaningful wind to read. Nobody expects a wind figure next to an indoor 60m, and nobody should attach one.
This is the one respect in which indoor marks are cleaner: an indoor sprint is never wind-aided, and it is never disallowed for a following breeze. What it also means is that you cannot use a helpful day to your advantage. What you ran is what you had.
If you are wondering how the +2.0 rule works outdoors, that is a separate piece of the puzzle, and we wrote it up in what the number next to your sprint actually means.
So how do you compare an indoor time to an outdoor one?
Carefully, and preferably not at all.
There are conversion tables in circulation, and various governing bodies apply their own adjustments for banked and oversized tracks when they compile rankings. Those adjustments are specific to the body applying them and to the exact track. They are not something to run in your head, and a converted number is not a mark you own.
The useful way to read your own season is to compare like with like. Indoor bests against last year's indoor bests. Outdoor against outdoor. A 200 on a flat 200m track against another 200 on a flat 200m track. Judged that way, most of the winter panic disappears.
What this means when a coach is reading your marks
A coach who recruits track knows all of this already. What they need from you is enough context to place the mark. That means every performance carrying:
- the event and the mark
- the date and the meet
- indoor or outdoor
- banked or flat, if it was indoors
- the timing method, fully automatic or hand timed
- the wind, if it was an outdoor event where wind is measured
A 22.4 with no context is a number. A 22.4 from a flat indoor 200 in February is a performance a coach can compare against everyone else's flat indoor 200 in February, and against what your outdoor season is likely to look like.
That is the whole reason every mark on TrackReels carries its meet, date, season, timing method and wind. Not to make the form longer. To make the number mean something to the person reading it.