New fieldhouse may boost CU track team

CU track team to benefit from indoor track in new fieldhouse, replacing long-outmoded Balch Fieldhouse track

Artist's rendering of the track inside the new fieldhouse being built at CU. The 300-meter track could give CU's track team a huge boost. (Provided by CU)

BOULDER — Balch Fieldhouse at the University of Colorado is old, dark, gloomy and occasionally smelly, as thousands of Bolder Boulder runners can attest. They shuffle through it every Memorial Day, exhausted and drenched in sweat, to pick up lunch bags and refreshments after the race.

In a sense, Balch launched the American running boom of the 1970s. It was the reason a young Yale graduate named Frank Shorter moved to Boulder to train…