How much did the Balboa Park course change this year at Brooks/Foot Locker?

The course is full with condensation, the mitochondria were eating at the bactiera of the cell and made the ground mushy

There have been 3 recent versions of the Balboa Park Foot Locker / Brooks course.

2023 version - This is the version that had been more or less the same over the past 2 decades.

2024 version - One of the workers who set up the course in 2024 went crazy in the 1 mile to 1.5 mile section and expanded it significantly without permission from Foot Locker.

2025 version - Brooks changed the layout of the 1 mile to 1.5 mile section quite a bit. (Meaning that it was different than both the 2023 and 2024 versions of the course.)

Long story short - The 2025 Brooks course is longer than the 2023 version of the course, but shorter than the 2024 version of the course. (And all 3 of those versions of the course were longer than the course was back in the 1980s and 1990s.)

"Speed Rating" type of adjustment. When you adjust for the fact that the 2025 course is longer than the 2023 course, and you also adjust for the fact that the course in 2025 was wet and little spongy in spots compared to the very dry 2023 course, it means that Dudek's 16:55 in 2025 and Bartlett's 16:57 in 2025 were both superior to Elizabeth Leachman's 16:50 in 2023. (If the course is dry next year, Dudek and Bartlett both have a shot to break the girl's 16:39 course record from 1990.)

And Spencer's 15:10 in 2025 was superior to Drew Griffith's 15:06 in 2023.

Fun Fact - This year the steep part of the big hill was 22 meters longer than it had been in the past.

Source - I live in San Diego and I measured the course each of the past 3 years with a professional measuring wheel.

(I originally only intended to measure the course one time in 2023, not realizing at the time that I would end up measuring it again in 2024 and 2025 because of significant course changes.)

Rojo. Do you EVER do any investigation on your own? Or just ask the forum to do the work for you?

asking for everyone who laughs at your “journalism”

Rojo apparently has never been to that course. A few years ago, either Rojo or his brother said that they had never been to the Foot Locker national championships. I was surprised. I would have thought they would have gone at least once.

C'mon Rojo, put it on your list of things to do next year. It's not like you have other meets you have to cover in mid December.

You want me to fly out to San Diego? You know how expensive that is. If Brooks wants to pay me 80k (Citius going rate apparently), I'll be happy to do it. :)

We have an expert on this forum who has measure it himself.

AMAZING post. How much longer is the course? Can you provide meter estimates. I mean are we talking 20m 100m? Details are key here.

To me, the whole point of Foot Lockers / Brooks is to compare times. I want the course the same. Why are they changing it?

PS. I've run in Balboa park or at least driven by it once when I was in San Diego.

Many San Diegans don't consider that Balboa Park, because it's east of Park Blvd and doesn't have the Zoo, museums, etc. Locally it's known as Morley Field.

Xxx

Don't hate on my king cofounder rojo. THERE IS NO ROOM FOR ROJO HATE ON LETSRUN.

Just asking questions is a big part of a journalist's job. They often need to talk to people who were there when an event happened, or experts in the field they are writing about.
Why would Rojo being flying to San Diego to measure the course every year? He wouldn't have known ahead of time if and when the course was going to change. Even if he had, the people with Rojo Derangement Syndrome would just say, "Rojo, you are an idiot, why would we trust your measurements? Why don't you do your job as a journalist and find an expert who actually measured it?"

Such an amazing lack of perspective

I think your section '"Speed Rating" type of adjustment' is misleading. You don't change speed ratings based on course conditions for a year. If the conditions are worse, and everyone runs slower, the speed ratings automatically adjust because they are a relative measure.

I better title for that section would be "Time Comparison Adjustment". But then still many people would say you can't accurately compare times across years. I'm in the middle, because it is interesting to compare times the best you can, but also with the knowledge that it is just an estimate.

Hey Alex, quit hating

This made me lol — which is it, man? We need answers!

Did you use the Jones/Oerth counter method?

Separate from just looking at the course map and the impact on race time, the tight width of the course, especially early in the race, may need to be examined.

If you watch the early part of the race, there was rope / plastic / whatever marking off the width of the course. I think it had a big impact on the race, especially early on as the width of the running course seemed to be really tight. I think this prevented / impacted the ability of some runners from moving up quickly.

Uhhhh.....I think the "whole point" of the Footlocker/Brooks Cross Country Championships is WINNING!!! Who freakin' cares what the time is! What does comparing times mean? Each year is different, the weather, course conditions (detours for construction, etc...), and race strategy. If we're comparing times, 2016 winner Reed Brown's time of 15:01 "compared" to Grant Fisher's 2014 time of 15:03 means what???what are we comparing???...ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!, both are Nat'l Champs and clearly the winning "time" isn't a predictor of future success (nothing against Reed Brown, but I'm not finding any notable performances and or victories from him post Footlocker). I'm guessing that Reed Brown isn't walking around telling people he ran faster than Grant Fisher. Point being, Cross Country isn't about "time", it's about WINNING!

he was the 10th us high schooler to break 4, and he did it before superspikes. that's something. got 5th at usas in 2022 :(

The first ever Kinney Nationals in 1979 was the original course at Balboa. I’m not sure when that course was changed, but it would be interesting to know how it compares to the current course. I wonder if anyone has access to that original course map.