Official Idaho HS XC 2023 Thread

Some people just struggle on some courses. Cody Lucas ran 16:33 and 16:31 last year on Firman and NXR. He's 3 for 3 on running 30+ seconds slower than his seasonal best on this course. Great runner, but maybe it's just a hard course for him to figure out.

Yeah, he was in 7th and just started fading.

Rocky’s speed scores (est) this year vs last-

188, 172, 170, 165, 164, 160, 159 vs. 193, 183, 173, 171, 161, 156, 149

Seattle Prep may have crapped the bed here, but all those at large spots are going to California and Southwest schools. Rocky’s team last year takes second here but still loses by around 100 points.

Actual Rocky speed scores-

187, 171, 169, 165, 163

Four Idaho guys at 180 or above- Heemeyer, Stadlander, Stockett and Ringert. I think someone said earlier that was what was needed to be top 15 at NXR. Stadtlander now has 3 or 4 marks at 180-182 this season.

CDA is the Idaho at large candidate if they get third to Crater and Jesuit.

Rocky Mountain averaged 171 speed rating at this race, Star Valley averaged 170, and Boise Senior averaged 168. Historically speaking, all three of these teams should in theory be good enough to get to NXN given slight improvement over the rest of the season.

However, with the current depth of California and the Southwest, as well as more South and Northeast teams that are nationally competitive than expected (in my mind at least), it's going to be unlikely any of these teams can get in without a really good day at NXR.

Their times would have yielded them 155 points at last years' NXR race. Banking on improvement that much later after the season isn't a guarantee, either. Only 2 guys on that Bob Firman team ran faster at NXR- Hunter Hill by 13 seconds, and Cody Lucas by 2 seconds.

I’d imagine they will plan for a bit more from Lucas. Their #4 and #5 didn’t get out like their #3 did, so at NXR it is likely they make that adjustment and look for 15:00-16:00 for their 1-5 spread. Their 4/5 guys moved up a bunch so I think they are as fit as their 3. If they have Heemeyer in the mix for the win and Lucas can be solid around 15:30 with a pack near 15:55-16:05 that could give them a shot. But, I’ll echo what others have said….Jesuit, CDA, and Crater have the capability of all coming and putting 5 guys sub 16 at NXR too so it all depends on what happens Nov 11.

CDA's speed ratings from the Montana meet: 180, 180, 173, 173, 170, 168, 158.

Rietze running so well makes them super tough. They now have seasonal bests of 180, 180 176, 173, 173, 168, 162.

You make it sound like they were way, way back. In reality, they were about 2 seconds out of the spot they would finish at the mile, and 5 seconds out of position for Jensen at the 2 mile, 3 seconds for Richardson. At 2 miles, the guy that was in the spot that Jensen finished was 13 seconds out of the spot that he finished in (39th). Tuft actually was separating from them.

Also, 15:30 isn’t “solid” for Cody Lucas on the Firman course. It’s 2 points better than he has ever run and 35 seconds faster than a course that he is 0/3 for running close to his ability on.

Heard Jenson tripped coming onto poplar the 2nd time. Also, 5 seconds off of where you wanted to be is worth 10-12 spots. Having several athletes 10-12 spots off of where you should be is detrimental in the team score.

I imagine that Rocky will make large improvements at NXR vs Firman (opposite of last year) but as always, those improvements might not be enough when seen in light of how good Jesuit/CDA/Crater will be

You’re the same guy that was posting under Michael Slagowski using the same “I heard” language and doing the same thing where you slightly misspell their names so it looks like you aren’t in the program. Crazy how you heard Jensen tripped. Even crazier how he tripped before the 4.5k mark but closed the gap even more from where he was at at 3.8k.

I’m also not saying it’s not detrimental in the team score, but saying that they are super far back and they really worked their way up when in reality they were less than 5 seconds back from where they finished the entire race is disingenuous at best and an outright lie at worst. Tuft further separated from them in the last half of the race. If they went out so much further back while being the same fitness level, you would think they would at least close the gap, if not get closer to even splits.

There's such a wide variance in how teams approached last week. There are plenty of schools that ran way less mileage and intensity last week and others that trained normally through it for whatever reason. Maybe Rocky sees big time improvements, but maybe those improvements place wise are limited because other schools that either were not at the meet or that had runners that ran close but trained through the meet see bigger improvements. It's so early that it's impossible to gauge

Rocky appears to have been running workouts at 5k or faster since at least early August, and their vaunted 8th Street long runs don't really appear to be happening much anymore (at least not for 3 weeks). That's what you see when you are trying to run fast NOW, not later. You can see that with their top guys. They are running around the same speed rankings that they ran at Caldwell, with the exception of Tuft, who ran in JV and dominated that race. Maybe Rocky was trying to hit a taper for Bob Firman and they'll try to cycle back up to hit one for NXR. It's still 6 weeks out, so they have plenty of time. I just don't buy that a team that has been running workouts at race pace for over a month and isn't running a long run consistently is going to ride out their current fitness until NXR and see big improvements along the way.

I was looking at the Hole in the Wall invite insta page and noticed that they said Rocky committed to that meet back in February but its not on Rocky’s schedule.

Anyone know why? Clearly they were fine with flying their fast kids to a big meet in February, so unless there is a change in belief since then, that’s not a reason.

They realized you run on a track multiple times during the race so they took it off their schedule fairly quick.

Got it. 5A State Girls stated earlier that “Rocky is one of those programs that values team culture over creating a hierarchy of fast kids that travel all over to big meets.”

XC times don’t matter said that “they value giving every kid a great experience and not just flying the fast kids to a bunch of meets.”

Not much consistency there if the reason they pulled out was running on a track multiple times.

That seems extremely consistent. Taking their whole team to Tiger Grizz and Bob Conley (Tough courses at Altitude) versus flying their top kids to a course that utilizes a track multiple times.