Course wrote:
As cool as it looks, Portland Meadows is a terrible place to hold a national championship race. The mud is often unreasonable and has drastic effects on the race outcome.
Obviously the race is going to stay in the Portland area. So Blue Lake Park is probably the best option. The Jim Danner Invite was held there for years and is a pretty fair course. Especially if NXN were to become the primary individual national championship, it is important that it be contested on a reasonable course, and Blue Lake fits the bill.
I respectfully disagree. Maybe Portland Meadows isn't an ideal course, but very few of those exist and as MVD pointed out, it's very spectator friendly. Regarding the mud, I don't see that changing the outcome. Good CROSS teams, regardless of where they are from, run well in adverse conditions. Some teams suck it up due to the weather, but it's mental not physical. Those teams were defeated long before the start of the race.
I've run at Blue Lake Park and, in my opinion, it's not challenging enough for a cross country national championships. It has a few bumps, but no real hills. Neither does Portland Meadows, but at least the mud makes it a strength course, something I believe should be a part of any good cross course, particularly for a championship race. Ideally, I would love to see a venue in the PDX area that had challenging hills and some mud, but I'm not familiar enough with the area to make a suggestion.