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

Well if you are going to promote a race as a national high school championship caliber race on new course and if we see crazy times and PRs two years running, and if the running press and websites are going to hype these XC times, then people are going to be skeptical. The times in relation to the speed ratings seemed odd. Plus we had a chance to see a direct comparison with Balboa Park and times were uniformly over a minute slower. So I do not blame people for being curious about exactly what is making Runninglane so fast. Personally I think it is the course design, but no harm in measuring it carefully and finding out.

I will keep playing along. All of the running outlets have declared the records without questioning the distance. Thousands of athletes and coaches and parents accepted the times. Thousands of Letsrun posters accepted the times. Five Letsrun posters want a XC course measured even though there is no standard method. With no standard method, the course was measured hundreds of times and the measurements were uploaded to Strava. Also, the meet director and course designer have measured the course and declared it to be accurate using a wheel.

blue man wrote:

I will keep playing along. All of the running outlets have declared the records without questioning the distance. Thousands of athletes and coaches and parents accepted the times. Thousands of Letsrun posters accepted the times. Five Letsrun posters want a XC course measured even though there is no standard method. With no standard method, the course was measured hundreds of times and the measurements were uploaded to Strava. Also, the meet director and course designer have measured the course and declared it to be accurate using a wheel.

With no specific language as to how close to inside boundaries a course was, or should be measured, we have a bunch of rough guesses. If the meet director and course designer measured the middle of the course the course is short by NFHS rule. If they measured three feet or five feet off the inside lines which seems like a fair way of setting up a CC Course, the course is short by NFHS rule. Until the NFHS gives a distance on how close to the inside boundaries a course should be measured, a true measurement, according to rule, can not happen.

I agree. I said that there is no standard.

BMeylan wrote:

coachy wrote:

There have been many “records” over the decades. So you have figured out that this is the most PRs ever set in one day?

I do not know the accuracy of the count, but in terms of PRs set in the RunningLane Gold races:

Athletic Net has a "filter" that can be applied to race results which displays PR (for personal record)/SR (for season record) based on the Athletic Net database ... Applying the filter to the RunningLane Gold races:

Boys Gold: 256/308 set a PR

Girls Gold: 215/297 set a PR

Is that the most PRs every set on one day?

So 72% of the girls and 83% of the boys set a PR IF that filter is correct. I would like to know how that filter works, we need to investigate that instead of just taking it as fact right?

Best competition and fastest course and at the end of the season when they are peaked and people are surprised that they PR'd? I would guess that many of them traveled there just for the PR. Be on that course and facing that field and a shot at a fast time was a factor for my team making the trip for sure. If it's "all about place and times don't matter" I am not sure why anyone not ranked in the top 10 would make the trip then.

blue man wrote:

I agree. I said that there is no standard.

Right. And if RunningLane measures their course with a tape and publishes the result, and if independent third parties verify the measurement, then we will have a defacto standard because no one will be able to claim a "national record" without measuring their course to the same accuracy. That's my plan A. Let's see what the RunningLane organizers do first before falling back on plan B.

We don't need officially NFHS certified courses to declare a national XC record. How do I know that? Because we don't have officially NFHS certified courses now and people are declaring a national XC record. Without an official standard we can at least encourage "best practices" for these big meets.

My son's PR isn't in athletic.net

They won't do it because there is a good chance that it will come up a bit short. What if they decide to do it and it measures 4980 meters? Then the next course that measures 50001 meters and somebody runs 14:20 will determine that to be the national record.

coachy wrote:

I’m the history of XC no one has ever required such proof of a course length. Each and every person involved in XC has accepted the advertised distance of courses with much less proof then what has already been provided for this course. Dozens of GPS and several wheels have show it to be accurate but all of a sudden that is now not enough.

And in the history of XC no one has ever claimed to have "...the fastest 5k cross country course in the Nation!" The focus on time is a fundamental change in the sport as well. And, yes, Ritz's high school PR might be on a short course, measured using a wheel, but one would think a new course designed for historic times would entail following "best practices" for measuring a course. I've never been involved in trying to certify a road course, but even I knew that GPS and wheels were not considered the best tools for an accurately measured course. And "close enough" doesn't work when you have the "fastest 5k cross country course in the Nation." Do it right.

Best practices would be to include NCAA and NFHS officials and engineers? And it would be to wheel the course dozens of times and wheeling it before every meet? That is what they have done.

And to say that they "claim" that it is the fastest 5k course is merely stating a fact. Hutchins had run the fastest 5k in history and now Sahlman has also. So they are just stating facts that the fastest times have been run on this course. It isn't like saying they have the most beautiful course which is an opinion.

hunt the big game wrote:

Best practices would be to include NCAA and NFHS officials and engineers? And it would be to wheel the course dozens of times and wheeling it before every meet? That is what they have done.

Steel tape. Or a combination of steel tape and Jones counter. Have you not been reading the thread?

monguse wrote:

My son's PR isn't in athletic.net

and many aren't. But people are winning to accept putting a "PR" next to someone's name on athletic.net as fact but not the course measurement that has been verified many times.

monguse wrote:

They won't do it because there is a good chance that it will come up a bit short. What if they decide to do it and it measures 4980 meters? Then the next course that measures 50001 meters and somebody runs 14:20 will determine that to be the national record.

Not a problem. The XC rules don't specify an exact length, so it only has to be somewhere around 5k. This crowd is very good at adjusting times to compare results. At this point I'm going to fall back on the "good enough for XC" argument.

We just keep circling. This is silly. It only has to be around 5k which is why a steel tape is not required. And the rules don't specify how to measure a course which is why this is the unofficial record. But if we get into using steel tape and have a specified distance from the borders, then anything less than 5k will be viewed as short and be invalid. Anybody claiming that this course is not around 5k after reading that an independent expert measured it and the race officials measured it and GPS verified it, are jut being difficult.

Yup, around 5km. Not 5000m, which is what website articles were pushing. 5000m gives more precision, and demands accuracy. It was over-reach by Gault and others, to generate interest.

hunt the big game wrote:

... anything less than 5k will be viewed as short and be invalid....

That's not true. If Hunt comes out to be 4,981 meters and the Ritz course comes out to be 5,008 meters, then no one will be saying the Hunt times don't count. We will normalize the times (scale them to a common standard) to 5,000 meters and say that's "good enough for cross country". Everyone is trying to do that now, but we don't have good enough data to do it right.

DiscoGary wrote:

hunt the big game wrote:

... anything less than 5k will be viewed as short and be invalid....

That's not true. If Hunt comes out to be 4,981 meters and the Ritz course comes out to be 5,008 meters, then no one will be saying the Hunt times don't count. We will normalize the times (scale them to a common standard) to 5,000 meters and say that's "good enough for cross country". Everyone is trying to do that now, but we don't have good enough data to do it right.

I am sure the 5 people in here calling for it to be measured with the new formula will all say it doesn't count.

I agree. The huge Tuohy fans will not accept it as a record if it is short. Heck, they won't accept it if accurate because courses are all different so why again do some people want it certified? It is only for the chance that it is short, not to prove that it is accurate.