Why Do XC Meets Take Sooo Long?

New XC Dad wrote:

booooooo hoooooooooooooooooooo! it takes time out of MY selfish life to support my daughter! boooooooooooo f***ing hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I bet the coach would love for you to take over as the race director and get things organized.

My recent experience is that it depends on the meet. My home town once hosted a meet with 4 classifications of schools (5 now), boys and girls and JV races. The first group went off around 7:30am and the last around noon. It was a long day, but that was 10 races. Over a 5K course with runners of varying abilities, the last runner may well come across in 30 minutes.

There is no excuse for a small dual or tri meet to take much longer. If the course requires multiple loops that is problematic as you cannot start the boys until the girls are off the course (or vice versa).

The Mt. SAC invitational has at least 30 races finish in that 4 hour time.

Wait for track season and then compare an all day track invitatioal to a XC invitational.

Some host schools fork out money and hire a finish line crew to do results from barcoded bib numbers and can take less than 5 minutes to print out after the last finisher. Others do it themselves and wade through the process of counting popsicle sticks and handwrite all the results in over 30 minutes.

Bring a book, or have a meet program, so you can read between races. Having gone to state meets where 40 minutes between start times is the norm, programs and previews of the races kept the downtime between races manageable.

Find another parent and and bet on the races to add some excitement.

Otherwise, go for a long run when your daughter isn't racing.

In a word "coaches."

In my experience, the length of a meet is determined by the number of races. You're right, they're half an hour apart, mostly for two reasons. First, especially in the JV races, it takes some of these kids almost 30 min just to finish the race. Second, it gives the timers and score keepers time to get organized before the next race starts.

A far as I remember, it was about 3 hours from the time the first race started until we got on the bus to go home. Of course, the kids get there about 1.5-2 hours early to putz around and warm-up, and you get in there some time between their arrival and the start of the first race.

Bottom line: you'll probably be home in time for the Ohio State football game every Saturday afternoon (they almost never play night games). We usually were. Of course, if you think XC is bad, just pray that your daughter doesn't run varsity in the Spring; Saturday invitational track meets take all day, literally.

Get an iPhone then you can watch streaming video or play with apps while you're waiting around. Take a lawn chair, too, then you won't have to stand the whole time.

The first step would be to get your daughter to stop running 45 minute 5k's.

Went to a meet last night and it was the opposite of the first three. They would start the next race after the majority of runners passed two miles on the previous race. Quick, efficient and always someone to cheer for.

I have my books, chair and blackberry lined up for the coming meets.

Thanks for the advice.

New XC Dad wrote:

Went to a meet last night and it was the opposite of the first three. They would start the next race after the majority of runners passed two miles on the previous race. Quick, efficient and always someone to cheer for.

I have my books, chair and blackberry lined up for the coming meets.

Thanks for the advice.

Obviously it would take two automatic timing systems to start one race before the previous race is finished, but it would certainly help the meet go faster. For me personally, I like to watch each of the races and would prefer one race gets over before the next one begins. You are still only looking at less than two hours if they run the races 30 minutes apart. I can handle that pretty easily.

The track meets are where it gets annoying if they have an inefficient timing system or worse yet, hand timers. Having close to 5 minutes between each race is unacceptable and is a big reason parents often don't go to track meets. Who wants to sit around for 5-8 hours, with over half the time being spent watching nothing.

Just thank your lucky stars that she doesn't swim...

Nice reply by MPM and very much to the point.

Do kids still get a Popsicle stick with a number on it when they enter the finishing chute?

New XC Dad wrote:

Went to a meet last night and it was the opposite of the first three. They would start the next race after the majority of runners passed two miles on the previous race. Quick, efficient and always someone to cheer for.

Please let us know what meet that was, so the meet organizers and officials can receive the respect/congratulations/thanks that they've earned.

Slope Oak wrote:

Do kids still get a Popsicle stick with a number on it when they enter the finishing chute?

Not often. Most invitationals are scored and timed using automatic chip timing.

Popsicle stick or note cards are only used at large dual meets. Small dual meets can be run with one timer, one person writing down names at the end of the chute, and a couple people making sure they stay in order in the chute.

We're run some small dual meets with boys and girls together with just one time and one recorder. We just made sure the recorder put a star next to the girls so that we could score them separately.

With printer watchers, there's no reason to have a 30 minute delay between races. Everything involving scoring can be done during the following race.