USATF club XC debacle

Stuck to the inside of the track and got 5.80 yikes

I've seen 5.83 on my feed

I got 6.08 sitting in the middle of things

In the end, they probably could've delayed the start and ran on the planned course as the storm blew through. But the tree came about 20 feet from wiping out the area by the registration tent and killing a few people. Trees were going to fall with the rain and the wind. Park Rangers have the authority to pull the permit, and they got skittish after seeing the tree so they did. I give them credit for still having a race. And to the park Rangers for closing off the Polo Grounds (they never do this) and letting us race.

I do ding them for the fact they ran out of shirts and were only giving women's mediums away to everybody. I ran the Masters 10k, was 5.9 miles on my watch and watches of teammates.

Also I ran on the polo field, it started like a road race. People self selected with fast guys at front and slow guys at back. There was a lot of traffic in both the Masters and especially the open, but it's basically a horse racing track and was wide enough.

Sounds fun. How was the race traffic? Spikes or flats? 10k XC PR? Race weather?

Wasn't 10k (Would've been had they run 8 full laps but it was too narrow to start over there) was more like 5.9 miles. People's shoe choices were mix of spikes and super shoes and trainers. I wore Brooks Ghosts, mainly cause I didn't want to wear my spikes and that's what I had. I'm not in PR shape at the moment, but ran in the range per mile I thought I was capable of. Maybe a little on the slow side, but footing wasn't great and a good two thirds of the field (including me) were lapped by the fast guys.

And as for the traffic, the open races was a little worse than the Masters race. The delta between Sergio Reyes, Malcom Richards and Ben Bruce and the mid pack Pacific Association guys was enough that it was easy for them to pass. People seemed to generally hold their lines, with the slower guys trying to stay on the outside. But as the race went on, footing got worse on the inside and the fast guys starting preferring the outside line. That got crowded but again people held their lines and it was fine. In the Open Race, the lead three were hauling and lapped well into very good runners. It meant it was harder for them to pass because the people they were lapping were going faster. The final sprint has two radically different lines through the last corner (Hocker went to the inside Panning was on the outside and Anderson in the middle, they were splitting a bunch of lap traffic between them but converged in the same place. Hocker had the best speed and therefore won the race.

These times are crazy. Not there but looking at results people I know are running a good 1-1:30 faster than they should. Course is either all downhill or blatantly short.

Knowing the LRC posers they'll claim this as their 10k PR. Hopefully the results will be listed as a full 10k.

Course was 7.75 laps of a .75 mile horse racing track. So the course itself was 5.8 miles but most people ran 5.9 as the inside was flooded and not really runnable.

It's a XC race, why the fixation on it being 'short'?

Because when you list a race as "Men's Open 10k" on your website I expect it to be 10 kilometers.

What wusses. I've done plenty of trail runs leaping down trees.

Your race distance is NEVER the advertised distance unless you are on a track.

I don't see the distance inaccuracy being an issue. Everyone knew the race starting and end point.

Alan