Inflated HS XC marks?

The "2.97 vs. 3 mile" debate over Detwieller Park in Illinois got beat to death a few years ago on this thread.

http://www.talk.dyestat.com/showthread.php?p=2186185

Somewhere in the 38 pages of BS is an article (I think) where it was measured with three different devices. It came out to be 2.98 which means it is approximately 10 seconds short for three miles.

Incredulous Coach wrote:

I've had both Cali & Illinois kids from large classes on the team with blazing xc times & not much else to speak of & other small class kids with impressive track times from other parts of the country. Guess who got a lot more money to come?

The kid from Mississippi with no fast times to his name but a heart of gold?

cgrunner2007 wrote:

Well a 15:16 for lets say 4800meters which is a hair short of 3 miles is worth about a 15:56 5k and a 9:51 3200 is on the same performance level as that.

That's assuming it is basically on a track. So maybe that liens up if you run a perfectly flat course.

Incredulous Coach wrote:

I am a relatively new college coach who sees a lot of high school runners' resumes while recruiting. I have noticed that xc times seem to be A LOT faster than what you'd think they'd be running on the track if the courses were legit. Now obviously it's XC & most probably aren't entirely accurate & that's not necessarily the point...but I regularly see low 19 minute 5k'ers that haven't broken into the low 5:30's or 12's on the track for the women & guys who haven't broken 4:50 & 10:30 but have supposedly run mid/low 16 minute 5k's. Is this all that rare? If not, is this a relatively new phenomena? I just don't remember this kind of incongruity five to six years ago...are high school coaches grossly mis-representing the length of their course to boost their kids' self esteem?

Yes, they are. Look at states like Minnesota.

Another reason for this (though the XC courses are short theory is likely correct) is that kids have more time to train during the summer before XC than they do in the winter before track. It's easy to double, there's usually more time between outdoor and XC than there is between XC and track, and there's no homework or other commitments to distract kids. When I was in HS I noticed I could destroy guys in track that were beating me in XC simply because I maintained the same volume of training over the winter that I did over the summer.

Formerly 9:20 wrote:

Another reason for this (though the XC courses are short theory is likely correct) is that kids have more time to train during the summer before XC than they do in the winter before track. It's easy to double, there's usually more time between outdoor and XC than there is between XC and track, and there's no homework or other commitments to distract kids. When I was in HS I noticed I could destroy guys in track that were beating me in XC simply because I maintained the same volume of training over the winter that I did over the summer.

Conversely, more kids will run over the winter with a team than over the summer by themselves or even with a team. Although the weather is, while sometimes better temperature-wise, nearly impossible to run in sometimes durign the winter (frozen roads, etc)