there is no way to know how hard a course is unless you have ran it. also if its a college cross course i have a hard time believing its slow. even the relatively slow ones are faster than a lot of crappy HS courses.
there is no way to know how hard a course is unless you have ran it. also if its a college cross course i have a hard time believing its slow. even the relatively slow ones are faster than a lot of crappy HS courses.
there is a course called the whittel warrior war path. its at whittel high school on nevada side of tahoe. elevation is 7,000 ft. there are 6 stream crossings which are dug out so that the water is over your knees, there are hay bales stacked up before the streams that you have to hurdle, the stream water is snow melt and numbs your legs. several hill climbs substantially steeper than anything at mt sac. multiple logs across trail which are above mens steeple height. when i ran i think the record was mid 18 minutes. there have been 4:10 and sub 9 HS runners on this course.
Just in Oregon, Trask has four river crossings, Silver Falls has a mile-long hill Seaside Three-Course Challenge has sand hills and water hole.
Steens Mountain Running Camp has an uphill 5-km that finishes at 8000 feet. Ian Dobson set the record in 18:40, holding off DIII national champ Dave Davis (a counselor.)
Max King has run 20 flat.
That's the second-hardest 5k campers run at Steens, after a thing called Cross-Canyon, which involves higher altitude yet, and bushwacking to finish line that can't be seen most of the time. Teams must finish holding hands.
sunken meadow separates men from boys
/thread
I have run 28:30 on a college 8k course two weeks before going under 25 for the first time. Both races were all out.
Of course the slow course was at some small school and could well have been long, but it also had river crossings and lots of rolling hills.
When I was in high school a local tEam thought it would be hilarious To design the hardest course ever at coyote hills regional park. I had a 15:19 5k pr in xc that year pr and could not break 20 minutes for the 3 mile course. It was supposed to be the site of our league championship that year but the coaches decided the downhills were so steep they were unsafe so the same local team changed the course but being the jokesters they were they made the new course 3.7 miles without telling anyone and since it was changed the night before no one had a chance to preview it. What a death march. That should be a Running event after 4 laps they add oN a random number of laps.
Hereford hands down, we call Bull Run the dream ruiner, you could be in the lead by 100 meters going into the last dip and come in 10th. The course is entirely hills and sharp turns, you can never get into a good rhythm, this course eats you if you are not prepared. If you have a little nagging injury on most courses you can run through it, hereford does everything it can to exploit that pain, sharp turns, grueling hills, sudden drops, change of terrain.
I was at the invite this year, within one race I saw 19 girls get carted out of the woods by emts.
gotta be a course in the northeast
Wise Guy wrote:
McAlpine, in Charlotte, NC, is a BEAST!
you're joking right, it's completely flat
This is a great thread. Especially with the lack of difficulty in most modern cross country courses. Some places have no choice due to geography. But there is something special about a course that is insanely challenging.
The old University of Southern Indiana course for high school meets rings a bell in Indiana.
That course, Magic City Running Park, in Birmingham hosted one of the top meets in the nation with many of the top HS teams facing off against each other, sponsored by Nike and inspired NXN a decade later. The Vulcan Classic. Old abandoned golf course. Very hilly. Foot Locker champs set course records - perhaps John Mortimer of Londonderry, NH and Erin Davis of Saratoga Springs if I recall set records. Site of Alabama state meet also for many years. Sadly the sport has become all about fast times and that means flat courses with little character to them.
Cuyahoga Valley National Park course in Ohio. Only a handful of guys have gotten under 17:00 in the course’ ac history and a few girls under 20:00. The course record for guys is maybe 16:23. Andrew Jordan who was a 14:44 guy and 8:40s in the 3200/2 mile barely managed to crack 17:00. Bridget Franek, an Olympian in the steeplechase, has the record for girls in 19:07. If there’s a harder course I don’t know where it is.
Dude I’ve ran there before it’s pretty flat, only hills are the small ones behind the tennis courts
Duckworth in Anderson South Carolina