Ever go back and run your high school XC home course for Fun????

My high school home XC course was absolutely awful. It was always my slowest time of the season.

I didn't run XC in high school (played soccer and was a high jumper/sprinter during track) but I live about a mile down the road from the cross country course. During the summer and fall I pretty much run it daily.

I test my fitness every few years by running my old hs xc course. I would regularly beat my hs pr. I could beat my hs pr now but it would take until the end of this coming xc season.

i recently ran 20 seconds faster than my H.S. PB. 15 years after my senior yr.

i ran the course for fun a couple of months ago when home, not racing, and it was more satisfying than running faster than my H.S. pb at age 33

Used to. Now there are 3 gates put up that have to be open if you wanna run the damn thing.

Same here. Gates up.

But I am on that train trying to run faster than high school PR. Would love to do it on that same course!

Every year I take a trip to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, NY and run/walk the 2.5 mile high school course (I'm 70 years old) that I ran in the 60s for Chaminade. The Catholic High School Athletic Association (CHSAA) runs an annual Alumni Race in November in conjunction with their Intersectional Championships.

Our XC courses (Monroe county, Rochester NY) were often very challenging. Menton ponds,harris Walen, Webster park, and Marcus Whitman just to name a few were quite grueling. How I ever ran low 16s on those I'll never know. They have made many of the courses in the area easier (remove steep hills, detour shitty areas, etc.) To make kids XC Times more competitive with other, faster regions.

Back in the day a 17:30 at Webster was flying. Single trail, switch back true woods racing in a forest. You could drop someone by putting 10 meters on them because they couldn't even see you at that point.

A few years ago, while temporarily living at home & waiting to get hired at a job that became my career, I ran daily for fitness on my old high school XC course. One perfect autumn Sunday afternoon, in that rare groove, I just kept running beyond my planned five miles or so. Did about a half marathon & felt like I'd just warmed up, but wisely I applied the brakes. As a result, for the first time ever, I was hit with the bug to train for the full 26.2. That one run on my old high school course was a pivotal day for me, having been hit by the proverbial bolt of lightning in a motivational way. I went on to run marathons & road races...nothing grand, but with great satisfaction. Haven't been back to the old course in years...might be a good time to jump start my running again with another inspiring run.

My hs didn't have a home meet. Is it common for schools to have their own xc courses? I could probably run some of the xc course we competed on faster than I ran in high school, if I could remember the courses.

My HS has an alumni race. The first time I ran it as an alumni I had my worst running wipeout in 35+ years of running. I still ran faster than I did in HS.

30+ years later, they claim the course is the same but they cut down a lot of trees. When they cut the trees, they took up many of the roots including the ones that caused my wipeout. The course record is now faster than it was but I doubt it is a better performance.

hell no our course sucked, even with championships being there I never set any PRs...never even in the top 5 times of the season

Yep, every couple of years. It's conveniently located about a mile away from the friend's house where I usually stay. It's in Indiana, and I live in upstate NY. The hills seem much smaller than I remember, but it has a lot of turns and is pretty good for spectators. I can still run it in under 19:00, which is about what I ran my Freshman year in 1980.

Hhhellllono wrote:

Our XC courses (Monroe county, Rochester NY) were often very challenging. Menton ponds,harris Walen, Webster park, and Marcus Whitman just to name a few were quite grueling. How I ever ran low 16s on those I'll never know. They have made many of the courses in the area easier (remove steep hills, detour shitty areas, etc.) To make kids XC Times more competitive with other, faster regions.

Back in the day a 17:30 at Webster was flying. Single trail, switch back true woods racing in a forest. You could drop someone by putting 10 meters on them because they couldn't even see you at that point.

Oh, the Marcus Whitman course...It never looked bad the first time you saw it, but something about that thing was hell. The courses out that way (Finger Lakes area) could get pretty crazy. Redneck country schools making courses up where they probably shouldn't have... (my school was one like that).

I've run it a few times since graduating, did a couple summers of training there during undergrad. Brings back the memories!

I sucked in H.S. and my PR was around 18:10 on our flat fast course. I still suck, but my PR improved by a little over 2 mins and I would normally give the course a good tempo effort during vacations. I think I ran a 17:15 on one effort and kept going till I hit 20 mins.

I actually use one we used in middle school gym class. It's about 1400 meters and I obviously can't compare my middle school times to now but it's a good test in my twenties and thirties. It's a great test for speed, endurance and some technical skills. My high school course wouldn't compare because they altered the landscape with reconfigured hills and new buildings.

In high school, my best time on our 3 mile course was a 14:59, achieved in a tough competitive race. I was so happy to break 15 for the first and only time to date. The course was flat and consisted of road, dirt track, grass, and a fair amount of turns. This was in the 80's. The school/coach would host fun runs in the Summer on the same course and I ran it a few different times, ranging form 14:45 to 15:20. In the early 90's I ran it in my peak years, at time when I was in good shape, and a 13:54 solo. That felt good and I still think its the only sub-14 performance, who knows, I havnt been back or known whats happening at my HS for nearly 15 years now

Anyhow, the difference was that from high school to just out of college, I continued to train and build up my strength and mileage base... And now I'm old and struggle to stay injury free and would be happy to be a minute slower than my high school time.

Our original course ran through the county prison. Over time they started getting some pretty bad dudes in residence ( The Shoe Bomber and Whitey Bulger) so we moved to the local middle school. Great route. A little buggy in the summer but has every thing you could ask for in an XC course. Try to run parts of it when I'm in town.

Good memory lane thread. I should get back to SoCal and give it a go. It was a challenging course, but I've been living at elevation for 15 of the past 20 years and only gotten stronger. Good call OP!