what's the most difficult (or slowest) high school xc course

broke wrote:

hereford high school in maryland. the dip is a slut.

Hereford is rough. Solomon haile has the record, its 15:45 or something around that. Centrowitz only ran 16:00 flat on it. The first person to even break s 16 on it was current stanford runner Graham Bazel 2 years ago. They have to put gymnastic mats on trees going down the "dip" (you go down then up, like a valley) so people don't destroy themselves . . .

parkside in the snow of course

kamfdkls wrote:

all races i ran in college were on courses 10000x easier than any high school courses we raced, w/ the exception being like Williams College course

seems like most college courses i raced are like fast golf courses not much slower than roads

The fact that the course at Williams is a standard for difficulty tells you how ridiculously easy college XC has become. By HS standards Williams would be on the easier side of average.

the hardest college course i run is the penn state 5.2 mi course.. it is like a track compared to most hs courses like sunken meadow

The Palos Verdes course in Southern California is easily one of the hardest courses in California and probably the entire country. It's only 3 miles but the course record is around 16:10 - 16:15 I'm pretty sure

The old West Virginia state meet course in Elkins had a course record in the 17:30s ran by a Footlocker (kinney at the time) Finalist and 9:09 3200 meter runner. The course featured a hill so steep in the first 1000 meters that almost everyone walked, it had 2 log jumps and 2 creeks that had to be run through. It was a total beast of a course.

PVdude wrote:

The Palos Verdes course in Southern California is easily one of the hardest courses in California and probably the entire country. It's only 3 miles but the course record is around 16:10 - 16:15 I'm pretty sure

2nd that one. i never raced it, but did a workout there in college, b/c my friends told me about it, and i didn't believe 'em that it could be "that bad." the hill reduces most high school studs to walk portions.

another lesser known course in LA County is La Mirada Park; well the old course that is. They had a hill that was 40-50m long, and just murdered your legs. The course was entirely grass, with rarely any flat spots--it was either up or down.

Bazell ran under 16 at Hereford? What year? I thought Haile was the only one to ever do it. But yeah, Centrowitz only ran 16 flat on the course. Pretty brutal.

The hardest course I ran in high school is about a half hour from my high school. Two laps of a 1.55 mile loop, start at the top of a hill and go down before an uphill on a sidewalk. At the end of the loop is the main hill: about as steep and long as Sunken's cardiac, but with fallen trees on it that you have to hurdle as you go up it and it's with uneven, rocky footing.

It's also narrow trail for a large part in the beginning, so if you get stuck behind someone way slower that sprints out of the line, you can't get around him at all.

To give you an idea how slow it is, the course record there is 18:21. The guy who ran it was a sub 4:25 miler in high school and ran mid 16s on average for a 5K.

This is definitely a tough course but times are terrible on it because it is also longer than a 5K (I'm not exactly sure by how much, but a decent amount.)

Great American XC Course in 2002. Chris Solinsky (FL Champ), #1 time of the day in 16:05...

Riverbend Park Catawba County NC

This course is hard. Course record for men's 5k is in the 18:50's by Ryan Hill I believe of NC State. He went on to run 14:50's at foot locker.

outlaw wrote:

PVdude wrote:

The Palos Verdes course in Southern California is easily one of the hardest courses in California and probably the entire country. It's only 3 miles but the course record is around 16:10 - 16:15 I'm pretty sure

2nd that one. i never raced it, but did a workout there in college, b/c my friends told me about it, and i didn't believe 'em that it could be "that bad." the hill reduces most high school studs to walk portions.

another lesser known course in LA County is La Mirada Park; well the old course that is. They had a hill that was 40-50m long, and just murdered your legs. The course was entirely grass, with rarely any flat spots--it was either up or down.

Yes, for some years now this course has been considered the most difficult in southern California, including the Mt SAC course, and probably all of California.

The course record for high school boys is 16:12 by Redondo Union's Cody Schmidt in 2008, who ran 9:07 for 3200m the following track season. He is now running for Cal Berkley.

The course record for high school girls is 18:36 by Peninsula's Emily Vince in 2001, who was State XC champ that year.

Both runners competed on this course at least once per year and trained on it, so these are mature times by runners very familiar with how to best run the course. It is the home course for Bay League schools Palos Verdes and Peninsula.

No doubt this is one of the toughest XC courses anywhere.

I think there is a distinction between a real course and a novelty course. There are a few in Oregon (Trask and the Seaside hard course) that even if you run all out you'd be hard pressed to break 19 minutes on. However, a lot of athletes don't go all out (particularly at Trask) and treat these more as fun meets where they can run through some mud/water and/or sand.

Detweiller........

Brandywine Creek State Park in Wilmington, DE has a pretty awful course. Webb ran 16:04 on it the same year he ran 353 in high school. The course record is Sharif Karie West Springfield, VA, 15:54. They changed the course this year because one part was pretty badly eroded so it isn't as tough.

Joaquin Miller Park in Oakland is the hardest course in California bar none. The course record is 17:42 by Tom Phelps a 4:10 miler who ran around the same time Ryan Hall did (I believe he was in the same Arcadia race that Webb won)

To break 18 on that course is an ENORMOUS achievement and not too many people have done it.

To give you a description, it is a series of loops in a forest which each have a pretty steep hill, but the last 2 hill loops are ridiculous... they are so steep that even as you are running straight up the hill you can touch the ground in front of you without bending over. It is a crazy course and before ESPN bought Dyestat it was acknowledged as the hardest course in California. There was a video made by Rich Gonzales walking through the course illustrating how tough it is.

Its gnarly

Hereford in Maryland. This was rated the toughest hill course in the country a few years back. It's a 3mile, but rarely does anyone break 17minutes on it. I think Graham Bazelle and Solomon Haile were the only ones to break 17 recently, and maryland runs there state meet there every year-so you know you're getting people's best efforts.

How do you guys think holmdel (Holmdel, NJ) compares to these courses?

(it's the hardest course i've ever ran so I'm just wondering.)