Paul Short Run, Emphasis on the SHORT

Here are the results btw:

East coast boys do it better

What you don't think NC guys is suddenly good enough to contend for podium at Nats?

My first reaction was that someone makes this claim any year there is good conditions and people run fast on this course, but i'll admit the times do seem oddly quick this year. More so than usual.

Perhaps shoe tech advancements are making their way into xc now as well?

If you look at the mile, 5k, and 6.3k splits they all make sense - the leaders are going about 4:40 pace the entire race, and just a few seconds faster the first and last miles as you'd expect. So unless they set up a new course this year and the bike or wheel they used was miscalibrated by a lot, it seems legit.

Maybe everyone's now wearing their track superspikes now? Seems like a good course to use them.

I have run it several times and will offer up some thoughts:

yes, the course is short but not by much. Maybe about 50 to 75 meters, depending on how the turns are setup.

The course drains well and has short grass, it’s like a track. I would totally believe that 90 guys at any given decent D1 meet could break 24 on the track.

the course is pretty flat, see point two.

need I say more?

It's literally the same course every year. There are permanent markers for all the turns and mile markers. If it was short this year, it's always been short.

The course drains terribly. It just has been extremely dry in the region. If you were at 2019 Club XC you know how bad Lehigh can get.

GPS data consistently puts it at an 8k. I fully understand GPS watches aren't fully accurate, but we have a lot of data here. It's possibly if you cut your tangents, you can get it to 4.95 vs 4.97.

So short? Maybe be 5-10 seconds, max. It is by far the fastest XC course I have ever run though.

Why must there be the same discussion each year

It is XC it is not exact get over it

Said this before in another thread: It's been the same course for decades, it isn't short. The weather has been great and dry all week. Conditions were perfect today. The course is well maintained, flat, and a hard surface, basically a track meet on grass.

This and the competition is always very deep. Actually the slight rolling hills and wide turns make it faster than a track imo. Another reason people need to stop obsessing over @times.” Place is what matters.

Raced there today and my watch had it at 4.87mi. Saw people cutting the course left and right. Parker actually cut the entire last loop… FRAUD!

The ladies 6K times all seemed too good to be true as well

Meh, no hills.

What final loop? It’s not a looped course.

Kamred Todd of Utah State was third in 23:07 and I looked at his other xc results on tfrrs.org in the link. He has run in the 23:30s and 23:40s on something like five other occasions, including 23:35.8 and 23:36.2 at Paul Short and Nuttycombe in 2021. So, I think it's reasonable to think that the course was short by ten or twenty seconds, allowing for ten to twenty seconds improvement on his part. The sheer # of teams averaging 23s was insane. But where there is a clear and obvious discrepancy is in the women's 6k. A D3 woman from Emory who has run 16:50 ran 20:22 to win the Brown race, which is just not feasible.

I ran it today and had 240+ feet of elevation gain so try again. Not a lot of hills, true, but what modern XC course does?

Hey dude, just wasn't an impressive feat today. Yea lots of people ran fast because the course is a cinch. My 50+ yo mother was at nearly every corner cheering me on. That says it all.

The one Strava entry I saw had it at 4.97 mi...so maybe a little short.