Parker Valby and hIlls? Has she ever run a hilly xc course in her life? How did she do?

Here's the actual course profile for the men's 10k:

strava.com

NCAA Midwest Regional - 2nd - Tom G.'s 6.3 mi run

Well that was pretty lit

Link:www.strava.com/activities/2867088573/o...

There are a lot of steep ups and downs, only one of which is long, the 600m leading to the finish, but the maximum altitude change even from the lowest to the highest point on the course is under 60ft and most hills are more like 20-40 ft of elevation change. For the women, it's only 6k, so a somewhat different course, not nearly as hard. Central Florida north of Ocala is quite hilly and so even in Gainesville, you're not going to have much difficulty finding hills to run on. Minimum elevation is 49 ft, max 207 ft. That's 2.5 times the elevation difference from the lowest to the highest point on the men's 10k course at OK St.

en-us.topographic-map.com

Gainesville topographic map, elevation, terrain

Visualization and sharing of free topographic maps. Gainesville, Alachua County, Florida, United States.

Link:en-us.topographic-map.com/map-25gp/Gai...

Up in Tallahassee there are big and noticeable hills that are quite steep. The FSU course was the nationals course last year and Valby ran that, of course, sticking her neck in the lead for a good deal of the race before being tripped and fading to 27th in 19:50, 7 seconds behind Tuohy and 25 seconds behind Orton. She was also 21 seconds behind Chelangat, while she was 18 seconds ahead of Chelangat at this year's South Region. It looks like OSU's course runs about 30-35 seconds slower than FSU's. Considering how Valby handled the hills in Huntsville at the South Region this year, which was very well (and I know from experience that there are some steep hills around Huntsville), I don't see this as a weakness for her.

Really? I get voted down and this got upvoted?

I'm a "hobby jogger" but I've run courses from the mountains to pancake flat. How can one of the best runners in the world not have done training on all kinds of terrain?

Zimmer feels flatter to me than Terre Haute.

Some courses are not “Rupp Certified”.

Isn't this the Terra Haute course?

laverngibson.com

Map

1-800-366-3043

Link:www.laverngibson.com/map.html

Because she's 20 years old, I'd guess, and hasn't been everywhere man. The Gainesville area is not pancake flat. Hopefully she's been hitting the Micanopy loop from time to time.

If the deleted post in question was a "thread-derailing post" why did it result in a correction to the misspelling of Valby's name? Isn't that an implicit acknowledgment that the deleted post was correct and put the thread back on track?

If you haven’t ran the course, you have no idea how hilly it is

Another said don't be a lazy a journalist should do some research

I would think she would, but it would have to fit into ~25 miles per week running, from what we hear.

Where/when did you hear that?

She apparently said she ran 2 days a week, supplemented by cross-training in the gym.

Don't you mean "hllls"?

I think all this talk about Valby and this NCAA course is making a mountain out of a molehill.

False. There are no hills in Florida, of the mole variety or otherwise.

Intelligence matters. Find a slope and do repeats. Race up stairs. Possibly an inclined treadmill. Intelligence matters.

Maybe but she has taken on the "wall" at ARP many times.

There are hills in central and north florida. There are also drawbridges in varying lengths, grades and distances and there are trash hills converted into green spaces, hill training can be done and is done in Florida..north, central and south. That said, valbys best chance is for touhy to have an off day. Let touhy and valby expend energy and brain cells worrying about each other, opportunity for others to sit in the pack and let others do the work.