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

No, I'm saying Hutchins had a great victory as shown by 58 seconds to next runner. But it doesn't make sense to compare finish times to other courses or even other days. XC courses and conditions vary. If you want to compare performances from one race to another then speed ratings are the logical tool to use, so long as there are runners who ran both.

Track records shouldn't count because tracks and shoes are so different from 50 or 100 years ago. I would say that cross country has changed less than track has. Flotrack posted a chart showing that the 5k is a different event than it was just 10 years ago. But XC 10 years ago to today? Not so much.

steve unbanned wrote:

No, I'm saying Hutchins had a great victory as shown by 58 seconds to next runner. But it doesn't make sense to compare finish times to other courses or even other days. XC courses and conditions vary. If you want to compare performances from one race to another then speed ratings are the logical tool to use, so long as there are runners who ran both.

Yes just like track. Can't compare one day to another because the conditions might be different. Some tracks are shaped different so we can't compare times on those either. Don't get me started on track surface, those are so much different from track to track so we can't compare those either. What if someone ran in lane 3 or 4 instead of lane 1! Can't compare that, the turns are totally different.

The terminology originally used by Ted Corbitt was the "prudent path". That later evolved into 1 meter from the curb or cones, then to the present day requirements of of 30 cm. It should be noted that for track measurements it's 30 cm from a curb (kerb for my friends on the other side of the Pond) and 20 cm from a cone but that doesn't translate to road measurements....always 30cm or less! And what I mean by less is that for some measurers it's a game of who can come up with the tightest measurement!!

I support the 30 cm for road courses and will incorporate fencing/barricade plan when measuring. I did this for the London, Rio, and Tokyo (Sapporo) Olympic & Race Walk routes. In fact prior to each of those races on race day I checked the course and often had to move barricades off the road at turns.

In addition for those races that have a "blue line" (it was red in Rio and green in Sapporo) I had them paint the lines approximately 1.5 meters from the curb on turns in anticipation that the police or other groups might set up something in the road that block the actual SPR. My opinion is that the "blue line" is a guide to the SPR and not necessarily the actual SPR. I also perform additional measurements on race day for race walk courses. The accuracy of these 1 km or 2km loops is absolutely critical and often is impacted by the set up of refreshment stations or other course elements. These course nearly always incorporate u-turns so it's easy and fast to do measurements on race day after the course is set up and usually a small shift of the radius center point by a few centimeters is all that is required.

Getting back to XC, Maybe the 30 cm rule is the best one or maybe it's the one meter rule but one of them should be adopted by all Federations from high school ----> World Athletics.

blue man wrote:

This course is nothing like Detweiller or NXR Heartland. Those courses are flat and completely compacted. This course has grass and hills.

All descriptions of this course sound exactly like Detweiller. Some say its flat, others say there are elevations changes. Detweiller has three loops with a 30 foot elevation change for each loop, totaling 90 feet down/up. Is that flat? The changes are so gradual that it appears flat, but ask anyone who had to finish the last 600 meters running up that long gradual incline if its flat and they can tell you it isn't. Also, Detweiller is not uniformly compacted. There are areas of open field with long grass and fairly soft dirt. But in general, it is a fast course... and a little short as well.

I have run Detweiller in HS and college. This course has no similarity to Detweiller. The surface is similar to OK St but not as hilly. The course has a nice climb past 2 miles. It is a real hill. The course is beautiful and great for spectating. Detweiller seems like a silly middle school course that got expanded to 3 miles. The fattest course in the country is NXR Heartland.

The surface is much softer here than Detweiller which is almost like running on hard dirt even after rain. Imagine running down a fareway at your favorite golf course.

This debate is unfolding the same way the Detweiller discussion went. As the debate raged, the heavy hitters started weighing in. Hopefully it will end the same way, but I won't be there.

How do you calibrate a walking wheel? Steel tape.

How do you calibrate a Jones counter? Steel tape.

How do you verify a GPS measurement? Steel tape.

Steel tape is the gold standard, so for less than $100 in equipment and a few hours slogging around the course we can get the best measurement possible. Why bother with any other method?

As far as records are concerned, if all top performances are measured with a tape, then at least the course length variable can be taken out of the "record" discussion, and it would certainly make a course record meaningful. Everyone knows that some courses run slow and others run fast but we still talk about the fastest time ever run. Again, that only becomes ~meaningful if we know the course lengths to a high degree of accuracy... which we can know.

Now... who's going to do this?

Actually, there are a lot fewer insults in this discussion than there were in the Detweiller thread.

Are you within striking distance of this course? Can you do this?

Great stuff, David!

One issue I see in smaller and even larger road races is a city street that has a concrete curb and gutter along a paved road and the SPR is in the angled gutter. NO ONE would want to run there on the straights and the cost to cone or fence blocks of city street is not practical. Just like on so many courses that have gravel shoulders on inside turns, most people would not leave the paved surface to cut a corner by a few strides but by the letter of the law those areas need to be coned or fenced off, correct? With so many CC courses now painting lines as boundaries and not having flags, a LOT of liberty is taken on these inside turns in the sparsely spectated portions of these courses which obviously shortens the course traveled...

I wish we would get more coaches who live in the area to go out and wheel it and report back. I walked the last mile with a coach last year who wheeled it and got it within a few meters. Our GPS this year had it a bit long which is exactly what we get at every other course that is supposedly accurate.

blue man wrote:

I have run Detweiller in HS and college. This course has no similarity to Detweiller. The surface is similar to OK St but not as hilly. The course has a nice climb past 2 miles. It is a real hill. The course is beautiful and great for spectating. Detweiller seems like a silly middle school course that got expanded to 3 miles. The fattest course in the country is NXR Heartland.

Someone else was complaining that the NXR Course has too many 90 degree turns? Why do you think the NXR course is fast?

and here I thought you maybe were Gary Hill from Track & Field News!

Thanks for your contribution to the measuring project at Detweiller! Looks like one in your crew wasn't happy with your findings!!

The NXR Heartland course is hard as a rock and as flat as a track. It has several 90 degree turns but the leaders can navigate them. If you are not in the lead, times will look more normal. John Hunt is super wide and has sweeping turns. It makes the race so fast because dozens of guys were able to stay with the lead rather than being forced to decide about falling back like you have to do at Heartland. Heartland is like running around a paved parking lot that is about 1 mile loops with cones on the corners. The leaders have no problem but if you are in 20th, you have to slow down.

blue man wrote:

The surface is much softer here than Detweiller which is almost like running on hard dirt even after rain. Imagine running down a fareway at your favorite golf course.

So softer than Detweiller, and hillier than Detweiller, and supposedly certainly longer than Detweiller, but then look at the times?

This course has no real turns while Detweiller has several turns around posts. Wile was the top IL finisher at RunningLane. He ran 14;19 at state and 14:48 here. He got beat by over 40 seconds. Sahlman would have run 13:40 at Detweiller.

A crew would be needed, otherwise someone like me reporting 4921m, 4919m, and 4918m would just get ridiculed like back with the Detweiller Debate.

Depending on when others could meet, I would be willing to fly down and help.

James ran 14:16 at state and 15:01 here. He got beat by almost 1 minute. I doubt Sahlman would run 13:20 at Detweiller but you now have 2 data points.