Video Tour of 2017 World Cross Country Course with Photos from Kampala Uganda

by LetsRun.com
March 25, 2017

KAMPALA, Uganda — In advance of Sunday’s World Cross Country Championships, we present to you a 5 minute video course tour of the course at the Kololo Independence Grounds and photos of the course.

The course is roughly a 2,000m loop that is repeated 5 times in the 10,000m races. Kampala may be the City of the 7 Hills, but the course is at a former airstrip, so the course with the exception of 3 hills is pancake flat.

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Don’t let the fact the majority of this course is pancake flat deceive you, this course is way more difficult than any course you’ll see at the NCAA Championships in America.

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Why? Because the course has one natural very steep dowhnill (roughly 10 feet downhill) that leads into a 90 degree turn followed by a short straight away (30-40 m) and another 90 degree turn with a steep uphill to get back on the level the runners were just on. Then a quarter mile later the course has what we are calling the “PIT” and it’s just a trench dug in the ground that has a very steep exit. Expect runners not to navigate it smoothly. The trench was dug to make an 8 foot high man made hill less than half a mile later.

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So that’s two very steep uphills and downhills, plus a trench, not to mention two sets of logs that runners must go over and all of that is repeated five times. Throw in the fact the course is almost never straight, it is constantly meandering, and you have a fair contest.

Our quick 5 minute video tour is below with photo below that.

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Course Photos
Click on a photo below to expand and to see captions.

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