This question’s been eating at me for a while now
I PR’ed this cross country season with a 20:11 (slow, I know). But the course wasn’t too fast. The first .2 miles goes through a flat open field but then the course turns into loose gravel and dirt and heads uphill sharply. It dips up and down for the next half mile, goes up for a little, curves dramatically on the next downhill, stays flat for about a quarter mile, and then finishes on a brutal hill riddled with tree roots and rocks. We run this loop three times.
This is also in Alaska where the altitude feels about 2-3,000 feet higher than normal because of how close it is to the pole and stuff
Of course, the description will always be a little misleading (and admittedly, biased in my favor). But I’m curious- how fast would I run a 5k on one of those golf courses that you lower 48ers race? Or a track? Or if nobody can really give me an estimate, is there a program anywhere that can predict how much it slowed me down, if at all?
A 1600 estimate would be nice too ?