Is The RunningLane Course 5K? Or Is It Short?

coachy wrote:

Now you are equating GPS on a track to this course? LOL

Since you have plotted you can see the turns are way more gentle then a track. I’m far from saying GPS is 100% accurate but when you have dozens of them it’s probably pretty darn close.

What's to LOL about? What do you think the course distance is then? I went into my Google Earth Pro plot with an open mind, and hoping to find it accurate, actually. But I'm confident in the plot I did based on experience doing it before on other things like 400m tracks. I'm familiar with course certification, and have a lot of experience in maps/GIS/engineering.

Please provide the organizations that are certifying XC courses? This is my second request and have yet to get an answer.

You can eliminate the short course prevention factor, this is not a road course and can’t be certified as such. Just like you can’t use a Jones counter or bike to measure it. If we are going to eliminate other forms of measurement you can eliminate those as well. A bike with Jones counter measuring uneven terrain wouldn’t work no matter the speed you did it at.

I didn't have an agenda here other than I was curious about the accuracy of the course.

There is no 5K high school cross country record though. At best it should be called an unofficial high school record (and US high school... obviously leaving out Kenya, Japan, and other countries). There is room for fast course like this, but there should be equal emphasis on tough and traditional courses. And even courses where the thought is more along the lines of this:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CXHWxcSLyxn/

coachy wrote:

You can eliminate the short course prevention factor, this is not a road course and can’t be certified as such. Just like you can’t use a Jones counter or bike to measure it. If we are going to eliminate other forms of measurement you can eliminate those as well. A bike with Jones counter measuring uneven terrain wouldn’t work no matter the speed you did it at.

Sure then 4950 m is 3.08 miles and 5000 m is still 3.11 miles. And you're saying my Google Earth Pro plot is worse than the GPS measurements of the racers, which are not going to be on the shortest line that I'm plotting anyway? I don't even know what your argument is.

5000m not adding more than that like you would for a road course.

My argument is that at this point everyone thinks they have the perfect way to measure it and everyone else’s are wrong. Take you pic, they can all be shot down. Unless proven false (which it hasn’t been) I believe that the organizer went out of their way to provide an extremely accurate permanent course. They spent hundreds of thousands to make this course happen and people think they were just winging it when it came to the most important part?

As Leo Young pointed out, having spectators yelling wildly 2-3 deep throughout the course is unprecedented in prep history. That alone is worth 10-20 seconds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ml2UiXHgCg

coachy wrote:

5000m not adding more than that like you would for a road course.

My argument is that at this point everyone thinks they have the perfect way to measure it and everyone else’s are wrong. Take you pic, they can all be shot down.

I'm waiting for someone to shoot down my pic/Google Earth Pro plot then. Waiting...

coachy wrote:

Unless proven false (which it hasn’t been) I believe that the organizer went out of their way to provide an extremely accurate permanent course. They spent hundreds of thousands to make this course happen and people think they were just winging it when it came to the most important part?

That's why I had an open mind going into doing that plot on Google Earth Pro. But it looks to me that they didn't measure shortest path. That leaves the center line as the probable line for the 5,000m measurement. Hey, maybe that's the right thing to do for cross country. That's not winging it, it's taking advantage of there not being a rule for measurement. As people have pointed out, there's no procedure for cross country course certification.

I agree that distance certification for cross country courses isn't done for good reason. The main reason I can think for that is that edges of most courses are often natural features aren't defined well enough and can't be guaranteed to be consistent year to year, so what do you measure to?

After the Woodbridge race that NP did earlier in the season, I was thinking of doing the same kind of distance plot with Google Earth Pro, to see what the actual distance was. But there was nothing in the aerial photo to measure, so I didn't try. However, unlike most other cross country courses, the Huntsville course, has defined painted edges that you can see from satellite imagery and is apparently marked with permanent monuments on the ground. So that's what allowed me to measure the shortest line on the course from afar. And that shortest line is about 4,950 meters.

True 5k wrote:

The final mile was downhill, hence the fast times. Have you considered that in a national meet this competitive, it takes a PR performance to be in the top 25? Plenty of guys did not PR, and that is why they weren't in that top 25. Please consider, because aggregated GPS data tends not to lie. One-off GPS data points can be outliers, but aggregated data doesn't lie.

"The final mile was downhill!" Everyone keeps saying this to justify the crazy fast final miles of everyone.

But it's not true.

The splits come from 2.1 mile to 3.1 miles.

The final mile starts with the largest hill on the course. That hill begins at 2.2 miles. After that you have a rolling downhill, but you finish at a higher point than where the final mile started, just slightly. (Final mile starts at 614ft elevation, ends at 623ft).

The point is the fast final miles where everyone somehow picks it up after dramatically slowing isn't due to a downhill final mile.

What tool and method did you use to measure the elevation? Nobody is believing the hundreds of GPS readings so they won't believe any readings that use satellites.

Do we have some kind of proof that they measured down the middle or that just your guess?

No way that a satellite measurement is more accurate then any other type of measurement. You might as well use GPS if you are going there.

So after saying the only accurate way to measure the course was steel tape, you attack me for saying not to use a Jones counter, then you say a jones counter wouldn’t work in another post. Nice.

The course I’m talking about was certified, and I use that term to mean approved as measuring 5000m, by the county parks and rec department, the university athletic department, the university engineering department, and the state coaches association

The John Hunt Course is certified.

coachy wrote:

Do we have some kind of proof that they measured down the middle or that just your guess?

No way that a satellite measurement is more accurate then any other type of measurement. You might as well use GPS if you are going there.

The guy, zzzzz, used the best method and it came up 50m short, so just under 55 yards which is just over 1/2 a football field. Someone brings up a wheel and you guys still b*tch. Good grief!!!!!

Where I live, if I recall the amount correctly, my late coach said it can't be longer than 5000 meters but it can't be more than 50 feet short or less, not 50 yards.

As for the interview someone posted with one of the Young brothers talking about crowds 2-3 deep the entire way, so what? You can still only run so fast as something called oxygen debt will kick in. Ever hear of the Olympic Stadium?;)

But the course is certified. That is the point. Engineers and the nfhs and ncaa and state association certified it but you guys want anonymous people to discredit the experts.

yeah.. the crowd energy thing is nonsense. this maybe works for middle packers, etc. but for those who are already highly motivated, it does very little. your body can do what it can do, and these guys have already learned how to get every bit out of themselves.

I think the distance is probably good enough. Comparable to any other fast course out there. But if it is hard packed enough, with short enough grass, it probably runs almost like a road race or a giant track.

not a duck wrote:

So after saying the only accurate way to measure the course was steel tape, you attack me for saying not to use a Jones counter, then you say a jones counter wouldn’t work in another post. Nice.

The course I’m talking about was certified, and I use that term to mean approved as measuring 5000m, by the county parks and rec department, the university athletic department, the university engineering department, and the state coaches association

So it's just as "certified" as RunningLane. My point is, that I know of I don't believe there is a "certification" process to XC races. If someone else has other information please provide it. I have never seen it, so please correct me if I am wrong.

not a duck wrote:

So after saying the only accurate way to measure the course was steel tape, you attack me for saying not to use a Jones counter, then you say a jones counter wouldn’t work in another post. Nice.

The course I’m talking about was certified, and I use that term to mean approved as measuring 5000m, by the county parks and rec department, the university athletic department, the university engineering department, and the state coaches association

I believe you actually said USATF Certification is done with a steel tape? Which it isn't. I can't keep track of who's using what names at this point.

I am saying that GPS (which is not all that accurate) used 100s of times is just as accurate as any of these other methods that you guys are throwing out there. People are so willing to throw out GPS because it doesn't fit their agenda but now use other inaccurate means because they think it will.

Funny that the majority of top NCAA runners all ran their high school 3200 PRs at the same track meet in early April and then got slower later? Hmmm. I guess the competition and crowd actually have a huge impact on times.