What is up with the NCAA XC Times?

It’s a mix of dragonflys, hard-packed courses, and yes, some short courses. Wake Med (ACC champs site this year) is widely regarded as short.
Point is, don’t pay attention to times in XC, just place. Times are for the track and the roads.

well sh.t, you are both faster and way more educated than i am

i imagine you make more than i do and actually attract real live women too

but hey at least i ratio'd you on LR so next time my dad asks "are you winning son?" it's gonna be a strong yes with no hesitation

/thread. I’ve been scratching my head about this topic for a few weeks now and at this point the only takeaway I have is that time absolutely does not matter in XC. It’s all about place/scores and results in head to head competitions.

My son is a 14:35 guy who has run 23:40 this season. I assume that the courses are short.

Double Threshold

Bicarb (40 secs over 8K?)

So I graduated a big D1 college in 2022 and all the freshman were talking about SARMS like Ostarine for lifting but using for XC. I was just running mid 24s as a senior when they joined- since 4 of the guys now have gone sub 2320 and 1 sub 22 as seniors.

lots of guys come in fast and never get much faster- all of the guys in my team who took SARMS have dropped minutes off their times.

i wouldn’t take it seriously, if you actually are someone who takes it seriously you would’ve just done sarms or something else- the real athletes have to sacrifice their body and their potential legacy to make it. You don’t win D1 playing by the rules. That’s what I learned

Nobody here knows what language you speaking “ratio’d” you used wrongly. Stop using as a verb.
speak normal

And I once threw a pigskin a 1/4 mile

Dan Flashes is a very aggressive store. I mean, you walk by a store and you see 50 guys who look just like me fighting over very complicated shirts, you go in.

Probably all above are true.

However, worth pointing out the one course we all know is accurately measured is WI's Zimmer layout where NCAAs will be held soon. And, amongst all the conference courses run this weekend, Zimmer is the only one to actually have inclines steep enough to be considered hills.

Zimmer has been in use since 2009 but was not measured correctly in its initial incarnation. Fortunately, it was lengthened to the full 6k/8k/10k distances in 2018.

Prior to 2018, Lawi Lalang/AZ held the (short) 8k course record at 23:03.

In 2022, Ky Robinson/Stanford reset the current (accurate) 8k course record to 23:09.

Now, this year, Parker Wolfe/NC ran 23:04 @ Nuttycombe to break Ky's record.

Then, Samuel/NM ran 22:33.8 @ Pre-Nats leading 8 others in under Parker's former record.

On the women's side, Parker Valby/FL ran 19:17.2 for the 6k record last year in bad weather.

Now, Pamela Kosgei/NM has lowered it to 18:59.1 with 5 others also under Valby's time @ Pre-Nats a couple weeks back.

Point being, course records are being clobbered this year on championship courses Zimmer/WI and Gans Creek/MO -- and hs courses Crystal Springs/CA and Woodward Park/CA -- not just the flat-as-a-board venues we watched on YouTube this weekend.

Also, while this fall has been dry for most parts of the country leading to hard, firm running conditions, course records are almost always set in similar conditions -- Valby's Zimmer course record last year being the exception.

So, have to agree that accumulated training in super shoes since 2017 has allowed athletes around the world, including US high schoolers, to get closer to achieving their cardiovascular potential in practice, thus resulting in much faster times during races.

Also, the introduction of NIL $$ is now attracting high quality international athletes who may otherwise have taken to the roads in their quest to earn a living.

And, believe we are seeing a COVID-19 "rebound" effect after essentially minimal racing from March 2000 through 2001. Seems like all these fast xc and track times have come in just the last couple years.

Presuming the Zimmer course is not mush on NCAA race day, fully expecting Morgan McDonald/WI's 29:08.3/10k CR from 2018 NCAAs to be blown away by maybe the top-20 runners.

Kosgei's 18:59.1 likely will be broken by several seconds as well.

After that . . . the (track) BU Opener on Dec. 7th.

Pro runner Ahmed Muhammed has already stated he's shooting for sub-13 -- meet record is 13:03.78 held by Graham Blanks/Harvard from last year. All the top collegians will be there. Pretty good chance the 3k and 5k collegiate records for both sexes will go down.

I can't see how it's the shoes cumulative training effect, that doesn't make sense. Tons of runners of the past ran a lot of their mileage on grass, where impact forces are considerably lower than the shoes on asphalt or concrete. You could always get way more volume in without been beaten up by running on grass.

The dragonfly definitely makes a difference though in race time, those spikes are nutty even when compared to the vaporfly, the plate in the vaporfly feels a bit benign as you don't really feel the flex all that much, in the dragonfly, the bounce is f*cking otherworldly, even on grass

you guys are jokers, you do realise that XC courses arent measured accurately. every course is likely to be sigificantly shorter than advertised. add to that an influx of 30yr old kenyans and potential for unchecked PEG usage

It's way too widespread (taking this more broadly to include the massive increase in sub-24s) to attribute simply to the influx of 2nd tier Kenyans. Either the shoes have really gotten faster this year over the last few years (and that was an inevitability once the IAAF permitted super shoes in any form), or something else like the lactic acid buffer prevalent in the men's 800m outdoors is already widespread. I saw 182 runners in one race sub-24. One or two guys went sub 22. A dozen or so went 22. It extends to some degree to smaller, less consequential conference champs as well, if you look. They are all running fast times.

Why would this year's courses be markedly lower across the country than last year's?

In most cases, they are running exactly the same course as they have run for years, though xc conference champs cycle through the different teams.

He probably used voice command!

Has anyone figured out who this guy is? I'm too lazy and not good enough at stalking to figure out.

Bruh, it’s cheat shoes nothing more. And it’s been like this for a few years. Wonder why no one was in the same universe as the American ncaa steeple record for 40 years and then 2 years after cheat shoes came out 3 guys broke it in one race? You’re right, a bunch of nobodies are running 23:00 and we have nike to thank.

Runners are definitely faster (just look at the track times), probably because of the shoes. But there are also barely any real XC courses anymore. I think the advent of TFRRS and the importance of the subjective coaches’ poll have made everyone scared of difficult courses - nowadays it’s just running on a grass track (possibly even faster than a track if the weather’s right).

The final nail in the coffin for real “Cross Country” courses was when Columbia hosted Ivies 5-6 years back. Instead of running on the legendary VCP course, with Cemetery Hill and the back hills, they cut out hills entirely and created a joke 10k course that was literally just 10 laps of the open field next to the parking lot.

Times have never mattered in XC.

They will continue to not matter.