14 DAY TRIAL // As it turns out, folks in China are nothing if not imaginative when it comes to making the most of whatever building space they have at their disposal. Hence their decision to set up a running track in the weirdest of places: atop a school.
The running track in question, photos of which are included in the gallery below, was not too long ago erected on the roof of an elementary school in the county of Tiantai in the country's Zhejiang Province.
It measures an impressive 200 meters (approximately 560 feet) in length and has an overall surface of 3,000 square meters (about 32,300 square feet). By the looks of it, it was built to encourage students to exercise.
Why build a running track on a roof?
It is understood that the people in charge of running this elementary school in China were desperate to offer students a place where they could exercise. When they failed to find any construction land, they turned their attention to the school's roof.
“Under the circumstances that limited land cannot provide enough space for students to exercise in, we chose to challenge the concept that playgrounds and tracks have to be on the ground,” chief architect Ruan Hao explained, as cited by Oddity Central.
The innovative running track was inaugurated earlier this year, in September. Some 1,600 students now visit it on a regular basis, and by the looks of it, they very much enjoy being able to stretch their legs not on the ground but high up in the skies.
It might look weird, but it's perfectly safe
Chances are that by now some of you are wondering whether letting a bunch of kids run around on a building roof is such a good idea. It just so happens that, contrary to what some might assume, this running track is about as safe as its gets.
More precisely, it packs as many as three protective layers that keep kids from running in the wrong direction. Its outermost wall and its innermost one stand some 1.8 meters (6 feet) and 1.2 meters (4 feet) tall, respectively, and have a green belt in between them. Besides, the children are forever monitored.
Funnily enough, this is not the first odd running track to have until now been built in China. It was earlier this year that the news broke that this country was home to the first rectangular running track in the world. This other bizarre track owes its shape to a bunch of workers who rushed to get the job done for fear of an inspection.
