Counting laps (indoor track)

lnblnb

I'm a fairweather runner.

As in, from March to October/November, I prefer running outside for my cardio and mix in a little gym time to balance things out.

....then I got talked into an April Half Marathon (I'm in MI), so needless to say, I need to adjust my running/training strategy to accomodate more indoor workouts.

During the week, I typically run early morning or late evening, and I'm not comfortable running in the dark when there is ice and snow (warm weather is fine, but I don't trust my footing in the dark and there are lots of really dark stretches on my typical routes). So, that leaves me the indoor track (8 laps to a mile) or the treadmill at the gym.

Treadmill is ok, but I bore quickly or find myself watching the clock too much....and ok, there is the I'm not fully awake at 5:30am and feel like I might fall off the treadmill because I can't run in a straight line factor, too.

Which brings me to the indoor track and the title of my post. This is my preferred option as I can vary my speed easier, get a little scenery change (or at least look out the windows)....but for the life of me, I can't keep track of the # of laps. I tried mapmyrun on my iphone, but it's not sensitive enough to make circles small enough to track the distance accurately.

Any tips for running laps indoors and tracking distance?
Bonus points if your solution doesn't include carrying anything in my hands!

ValerieMomof2

Does it have lanes? I hate running a track with a passion and have the same issue so what I did was after each lap, I moved over one lane and then started coming back in. I rely on my Garmin for distance normally but if I didn't have that, this is the only thing that works for me since I don't like carrying anything either (like a lap counter)