As a west coast runner i thought XC courses were designed to lose runners, kind of like orienteering only without a map or compass.
When i went back East i realized XC was a great sport that could be run on fairly simple but still challenging courses.
I have run on some of the most stupid & needlessly complicated courses imaginable. I remember one in Long Beach CA where at the start line the coach tried to explain one section where we had to make alternating turns around playground equipment,
"make a left turn at the first slide,make a full circle around the slide and head west to the next slide, this time go right, make a half circle...."
Our whole team just stared at him with our mouths wide open,
"what the f*** is this guy talking about???!!!"
the Home team is laughing their ass off and then boom,
the race is on, It was a triangle meet & when we got to this section the top 3 guys from both visiting teams all went off course, and had to backtrack more than a half mile.
I figured this was just an example of a stupid coach trying to get a cheap win, but i ending up running alot of courses that really did not make sense.
Obviously if someone would have chalked the turns this whole mess would have never happened.
Is that so hard ?