Video Tour and Photo Gallery of World XC Course with the PIT

excellent work.

yea cant see no or hs coaches in the usa allowing that course. will make for some interesting racing on sunday

Great writeup, photos and video, guys.

That man-made pit is ridiculous and dangerous. Not to mention, pointless. I don't see how that makes it a better course. Tough hills and even some sketchy footing is one thing, but a narrow, waist-deep pit that is only a few feet across is just dumb.

Keep up the good work.

easy weeks wrote:

Great writeup, photos and video, guys.

That man-made pit is ridiculous and dangerous. Not to mention, pointless. I don't see how that makes it a better course. Tough hills and even some sketchy footing is one thing, but a narrow, waist-deep pit that is only a few feet across is just dumb.

Keep up the good work.

You must be about 19, from The States, and likely from California. The rest of the world doesn't race on manicured golf courses.

Fjell Running wrote:

easy weeks wrote:

Great writeup, photos and video, guys.

That man-made pit is ridiculous and dangerous. Not to mention, pointless. I don't see how that makes it a better course. Tough hills and even some sketchy footing is one thing, but a narrow, waist-deep pit that is only a few feet across is just dumb.

Keep up the good work.

You must be about 19, from The States, and likely from California. The rest of the world doesn't race on manicured golf courses.

I'm 32 and from california. If you remove the pit, most of our golf course races (which are about 20% of our courses) are much tougher than this one. I think the point is that the pit resembles something from a tough mudder course: more annoying because it forces you to break your stride and scramble rather than something particularly difficult.

Thanks for the video. I actually had to watch it with subtitles because my wife fell asleep. What struck me was that the auto-generated closed captioning read very similarly to the typical letsrun article. Spelling, grammar, and somewhat random word choice was almost a spot on caricature.

Everybody should try it, it was very entertaining.

I see a lot of blown out Achilles' tendons on that trench.

Alan

The things you people whine about are so ridiculous.

Dont you have anything better to do than complain about the ground conditions in CROSS COUNTRY?

Fjell Running wrote:

easy weeks wrote:

Great writeup, photos and video, guys.

That man-made pit is ridiculous and dangerous. Not to mention, pointless. I don't see how that makes it a better course. Tough hills and even some sketchy footing is one thing, but a narrow, waist-deep pit that is only a few feet across is just dumb.

Keep up the good work.

You must be about 19, from The States, and likely from California. The rest of the world doesn't race on manicured golf courses.

I'm 48, and from Canada. So not even close. And the XC courses from my area are often quite tough, as we are on the Niagara Escarpment. We don't dig man-made pits to add difficulty.

This course brings up an investing thought. Over the last few years the courses at WXC seemed to be for the most part flat and as some have said a 10k track race on grass (OK Poland a few years ago the snow and mud really messed things up) and as a result more than ever the east africans dominated. This drove many of the top Europeans and US runners away. It did not help holding this event in areas where many US top elites feel health might be an issue in a WC or Olympic year (getting shots to go to these sites) or the extensive travel.

In an effort to make the course more exciting this years hosts added the pit some very short downhills followed by sharp turns and logs to jump over. As stated the NCAA and most if not all HS federations would not allow runners to race such a course. This will be another reason why many US and Euro elites now will claim they stayed away because risk of injury.

What has been reported over the last day or 2 the 2019 course is going to be almost a mix of true xc and a tough mudder event. Is this going to drive even more US and Euro elites away?

By now your ready to ask why is it only driving away the US and Euro elites and not the east African? Many of these athletes use WXC or any chance to represent their nation as a chance to get out and get contacts and maybe a major contract with an agent and make money for the family.

Travel to 2019 should not be a reason for US or Euro elites to pass up the event but after seeing this years course and what might be in store for 2019 might not see the return of these runners

We know the Kenyans have been known to hurdle the entire water jump in a 3k steeplechase - will they try (and is it even possible ) to try to hurdle/jump all the way across this pit ?

easy weeks wrote:

a narrow, waist-deep pit that is only a few feet across is just dumb.

That is stupid, pointness and dangerous.

Thanks for the updates.

From the video, that is a very easyyyy course, not hard at all.

The pit and logs are a little ridiculous and unnecessarily dangerous, reminescent of Smith's stair steps in the middle of the Stillwater course a few years ago but, other than that, the course is 99 percent pancake flat, and the whoa steep hills are only 10 yards not, not in the least bit challenging. Again, this is a very very easy course.

Thanks for the vid. Didn't seem like the pit was too hard to navigate. I'll be interested in seeing how all the "meandering" plays into the race. Almost wish the LRC team could have Seo'd the course and gotten more stable video. Thanks though, ready to watch the event tomorrow morning!

Tim Hutchings is not impressed on twitter:

"Just saw video-tour @letsrundotcom of World CC 2k loop. Airfield flat; "hills" are bumps - at race speed, will take 5-6 strides. #NotRealCC"

but the 3rd, 4th and 5th time up those hills and over the logs will have an effect.

Watching the Edinburgh xc this past winter it seemed that they had some smalls hills just like those and those few streams you need to use an extra effort to get across have an effect the more you go over them.

You watch as runners repeat over the so called pancake flat course there will be many who will be crawling up those small hills

That is some great analysis.

I loved the video with the LetsRun.com boys playing in the PIT!!!

In conclusion:

1) Black men and women will dominate the World XC Championships…again.

2) wejo and rojo are still very very very upset about this…again.

3) Dig it!!!

LetsRun.com wrote:

Course has a man made pit that was ridiculously steep the first time we saw it. Wasn't quite as bad today but this thing must be navigated 5 times.

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2017/03/video-tour-2017-world-cross-country-course-photos-kampala-uganda/

Who is the racist retard with brain damage in the video???

These boys have no neurogenesis today.

They have necrosis of their neurons.

Dig it!!!

I was at the '84 Worlds in East Rutherford, N.J., held at the Meadowlands horse racing track. Although muddy, it was pretty flat. I guess in order to have some sort of incline, they built this ridiculous two-story plywood ramp. Not covered in dirt or grass, just bare plywood. Up one side & down the other. I've never seen anything like it before or since.