“Slowness” of Cross Country Courses

cross country wrote:

Here is a simple methodology to determine how “slow” a cross-country course is relative to a track 5k (or similarly, for a track 10k distance):

(1) Take a broad data-set of athlete times recently run on a cross-country course (example, athlete finishing times from SEC Conference Championship on 10/27/23).

(2) For each male athlete, plug their 8k time into Jack Daniels Calculator to determine what their “equivalent” 5k (or 10k) time would be on that course (in similar conditions).

(3) Subtract the athlete’s 5k track PB from the 5k cross-country course “equivalent”; the “difference” is essentially how much slower the course was relative to that athlete’s track PB.

(4) Repeat step (3) for each athlete, then average all of the “differences” to get a rough average of how “slow” the course was relative to the track.

This method would be more accurate for seasoned collegiate athletes that are not changing their PB’s as rapidly as high-schoolers from year-to-year.

cross country wrote:

cross country wrote:

Here is a simple methodology to determine how “slow” a cross-country course is relative to a track 5k (or similarly, for a track 10k distance):

(1) Take a broad data-set of athlete times recently run on a cross-country course (example, athlete finishing times from SEC Conference Championship on 10/27/23).

(2) For each male athlete, plug their 8k time into Jack Daniels Calculator to determine what their “equivalent” 5k (or 10k) time would be on that course (in similar conditions).

(3) Subtract the athlete’s 5k track PB from the 5k cross-country course “equivalent”; the “difference” is essentially how much slower the course was relative to that athlete’s track PB.

(4) Repeat step (3) for each athlete, then average all of the “differences” to get a rough average of how “slow” the course was relative to the track.

This method would be more accurate for seasoned collegiate athletes that are not changing their PB’s as rapidly as high-schoolers from year-to-year.

I started to perform the above exercise because I was curious how fast some athletes in particular (Parker Valby) might currently be on the track based on their cross-country time.

I realized the “slowness” would increase in accuracy the larger the data-set evaluated. However, that was going to take a significant amount of time and work to crunch the data from 20 or more athletes on the men’s side and then 20 or more athletes on the women’s side.

That’s when I realized what I was trying to do is already, in essence, being done by LACCTIC, but to a much greater reach.