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

D.Katz wrote:

Yes, World Athletics recognizes a mile as a stand alone record distance but all international track/. road race surveyors/measurers will measure it out at 1609.344m. Similar for the marathon = 42195m. I personally think that we should get rid of metric and go with "Smoots". The marathon would then equal 24794.335 Smoots!

I can't second your Smoot recommendation. I Understand the standard Smoot is getting shorter every year forcing us back into the calibration nightmare. Given that there is only one original Smoot available for measuring, the idea does not scale up for general use as a standard.

DiscoGary wrote:

D.Katz wrote:

Yes, World Athletics recognizes a mile as a stand alone record distance but all international track/. road race surveyors/measurers will measure it out at 1609.344m. Similar for the marathon = 42195m. I personally think that we should get rid of metric and go with "Smoots". The marathon would then equal 24794.335 Smoots!

I can't second your Smoot recommendation. I Understand the standard Smoot is getting shorter every year forcing us back into the calibration nightmare. Given that there is only one original Smoot available for measuring, the idea does not scale up for general use as a standard.

Good one, guys!

I had to google the smoot to figure what was up!

Not sure if David's knowledge or Ward's scolding of coachy killed this thread, but I still would like to see DiscoGary, Ward, D.Katz and the BroJos steel tape the Running Lanes course. Garmin should also get behind this to also promote their gps devices and show the World their accuracy on a cross country course and put this situation to bed.

zzzz wrote:

steve unbanned wrote:

Apparently in Europe, they don't even try to make xc courses a standard length. They just make a good course that fits in the space they have. And they keep records of how came 1st 2nd etc.

Why keep a 'record' if you cannot even say how far they ran, never mind about mud/turns/hills/etc

That's the case for most high school cross country races in the US isn't it? I never ran on a 5K course in high school cross country ('80s for me). 2.86 miles and 2.95 miles (Crystal Springs) were the distances for the courses I ran the most. Looking at athletic.net for my old high school, it looks like most of their current meets are still non-standardized distances.

Steve you can keep course records, doesn't matter how far you run.

Thanks for the research and article, Jonathan!

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2021/12/was-the-course-at-the-runninglane-cross-country-championships-short-well/

Could you ask Dr. Neal how close to the inside boundaries he measured? I know the article states "shortest possible route", but curious what his interpretation of those three words are?

Thanks again for looking into this course and writing the article.

Let’s assume that someone goes out there and measures the Hunt course with a tape and it comes out close to 5k. That’s when the fun really begins because we will only have half the information we need to determine who has “the record”.

Someone needs to recreate and measure the Ritz course in Michigan with a tape. The good news is that I’m close enough to help with that, but I know nothing about the course. Do they still run on that course? Who here is confident that they can recreate it to the accuracy we need to compare times? That race almost certainly was recorded, and that will help.

We need to record elevation changes for both courses as well but that can be done with topographic maps of the areas.

… and then what if we find that the Hunt course is slightly shorter but has more elevation changes? That should be good for another 600 posts as we try to convert elevation differences into time deltas.

lets do the same analysis on the stanford track

Have that dude measure Woodbridge where Leo Young ran 13:38 for 3 miles see what he comes up with.. because 13:38 in September can easily be 14:05 in November.

This thread is a little out of control. All indications point to that it is a legit 5k. The problem is that the course itself is bad for the sport of XC! A legit “XC champion” should always be determined on a legit XC course like Balboa that has real hills, turns, and different terrain and has stood the test of time. Balboa has proven that an elite runner who should go down in history as an all time HS great will break 17:00 on that course! Only 10 in a 35+ history have ever broke 17. Runninglane times mean nothing on judging how great a runner is in running history. If Cook would have not run at Runnninglane she would be talked about realistically as she should…..a FL champion a particular year, but nothing special in FL history otherwise. Her performance is not even a top 25 performance!

If Cook is not a legit XC champion, what is she? And the boys' order also remained quite consistent from Garmin to Eastbay.

not a name wrote:

If Cook is not a legit XC champion, what is she? And the boys' order also remained quite consistent from Garmin to Eastbay.

No where did I say she was not a legit champ! I’m just saying her performance was not an all time great performance, and she is not an all time great HS XC runner in terms of a top 25 all time HS XC runner. She is the legit best HS XC runner of 2021….. no doubt!

"A legit “XC champion” should always be determined on a legit XC course". Which is it? If Cook is legit then John Hunt is legit. If John Hunt is illegitimate, then Cook is illegitimate. Rather than asking where you stated it, you should clarify your position.

How close to 5k do you need to be in your eyes to be considered a "legit 5k"?

Is the Michigan State Meet course legit in your mind?

The problem is not determining that any course qualifies as a "legit" cross country course. The real problem for the existence of this thread is that people want to recognize cross country records beyond course records. Otherwise this thread would have ended on page 1!

Course conditions change every year. Very few runners have won 2 national championships. XC is about racing and winning championships, not about times. That makes her one of the best of all time

It isn't a problem. It is a good thing. It gets people interested and engaged. And I will point it out again that most of you are using the term incorrectly which throws some of us. A record is merely the evidence that something happened, like a timing service maintains the records of the meet. Every time run at Garmin is part of the record. It is akin to somebody saying they have a temperature when they mean they have a high temperature. Nobody should be disputing the record of Jenna Hutchins. We saw her on video. We can pull up the race results. Those are the records. You obviously are saying that you don't want to compare times from different courses.

Yep. Unless you are running on the same course the times do ot mean anything. What we know is that Runninglane is extremely fast and runs so far over a minute slower than Balboa Park.

Yes. It is just silly that people are so worked up about getting it "certified". Some D1 cross country courses are short and some are long and some are accurate but nobody gets worked up when guys run 23 minutes one week and 25 minutes another week. It seems that more people are upset this year than they were last year. I think Hutchins' track time quieted people down last year but most either forgot or were not familiar with last year's results. Many were under the impression that this was some crappy course set up just for this meet. The fact is that there aren't many course in the country that more time was put into setting up. 95% of courses like Balboa are set up the day before the meet. The courses are never going to be identical from year to year. This one is dedicated and it will not cahnge so at least we can compare across years.