wilammete course??

Blazing fast, or so everyone says. I ran there once at the NCAA Div III regional meet. It's mostly flat as a pancake, with two small climbs. The surface is probably 60% hard dirt, 30% asphalt, and 10% grass, with a synthetic track finish. You can't wear spikes because of the asphalt, but you don't need to because the surfaces are so solid.

Anyway, I'm not going to call it short because I PR'ed there!

The course is at real low elavation, and super flat. I doubt it is short, because they have a lot of mile/km marks.

Don\'t kid yourself! Willamette is short. Look at the guys who ran fast. It is short. I tell you what, when they go to a regional meet, compare the times. Or if they go to a national course compare. YOU GUYS ARE ALL WAY OFF SAYING IT IS 8,000m.

out

one vote for short

Well, I was there today, and I have to say that I not as convinced that it's short as I once was. There are several long gradual downhills that make this course FAST. Also the weather is perfect, overcast and cool (in the 50-60 range). I always used to say that there's no way this course is NOT short, but now after actually having gone to the meet and seen the course, I'm not so sure. I did my run this morning on the course, and I went around it a number of times, making note of the splits. None of them seemed to be conspicuously off/fast. I would mention that although this is a cross country course, there are large portions of pavement (including all of the significant uphills). The course seems well organized measured and marked (more so than Stanford Invite), so I would be inclined to guess that the coaches have their shit together, and have measured out an accurate course. I didn't wheel it (although I did see a couple coaches out there in the morning doing just that) so take my opinion for whatever it's worth.

That's some sound reasoning. Dave Davis' 23:13 is 14:30 pace for 5k, a pace he can run quite comfortably, I might add. The Willamette course is rather deceptive in that some people find it quite fast, while others find the occasional mucky footing and gradual climbs surprisingly difficult. The course produces many fast times and many average ones, but rarely any slow ones. If you watched Davis run in college, you would know he is much tougher off the track than on (and gets better the tougher the course), so it isn't hard to believe he could hold that fairly conservative 5k pace for an extra 3k.

There were several other near-national caliber and highly competitive post collegiates behind him.

Good advice. No one believed the Willamette men could reproduce last year's times on that course, but they went on to finish 6 spots higher than ranked at nationals... 3 guys from the region finished in the top 10 at nationals (with the conference champ finishing well back of 2 of them he had soundly beaten at conference), which would imply to me that fast times on the course actually compare quite well to what is being run elsewhere.

To add to and clarify what ishapiro said, there isn't really much packed dirt on the course, rather barkdust. For last year's meets (Invite, Conference, and Regionals), the weather remained quite good and the course was fast and dry. It didn't seem bad yesterday, even though it's been raining off and on the past week. After a few weeks of rain (or if the city does its overnight watering of the paths), it can become significantly slower.

And as EITS said, numerous visiting coaches have measured the course and not reported any inaccuracies. The park is also home to most of the local high school races, so many of the common loops have been measured regularly for that purpose.

Full results for anyone who has not seen what is being discussed...

Dan

3 258 Swanson, 4:47 23:48.33

16 174 McManus, Mark 4:53 24:20.55

Both of these guys are very capable of running these times...even on a tough course. I'd say on a fast course it is legit.

..guys it's a quick course, but nothing insane......Lots of guys ran quick there who don't have great track times, and some guys with decent track times ran ok/poorly. It's frim with no crazy long uphills (ie steep with more gradual downhills)....Obviously some guys who ran there are quite fit right now.....and think about it.... something like 24 mins is only 3mins/km...and that's not particularly fast for that course considering the footing and course setup....