Hardest Highschool Xc course

It isn't the hardest, but it is up there, the Hereford HS course in Maryland. They hold the bull run invitational there every year and the state champs. I thought I remember reading that the course has changed in the past few years however I am not sure.

Colorado State Meet Course @ penrose equestrian center/bear creek regional park. Before the course was recently adjusted, making it much easier. The course has an insane bottleneck right at the start that involved running through a barn then into a narrow creek bed. Then giant hill climbs at high altitude. Followed by a steep decent. The finished involved running back through the creek bed, and up a couple short steep hills. Course was notorious for crushing even national level talent. Most athletes were two minutes off their PR's.

Don't get me wrong, it was and is a great cross country course. Its just extremely difficult.

From my experience, Mt. SAC is a bitch, but I think those big old hills get more hype than they deserve as it is pretty easy to just haul ass down the other side of any of them. I have also heard the horror stories from crystal springs, near San Francisco. And there's a lot of talk on here about Sunken Meadow, where Ches holds the record at 15:20 and only two other guys have ever broken 15:40.

Holmdel. Even though Ches ran sub 15 it's still one of the hardest courses in the US. The bowl is the hardest hill I've ever run.

Manhattan is also pretty hard.

Holmdel

French Dawg wrote:

From my experience, Mt. SAC is a bitch, but I think those big old hills get more hype than they deserve as it is pretty easy to just haul ass down the other side of any of them.

I ran those bitch ass hills yesterday. They are a bitch.

Pennsylvania State course at Hershey park is brutal

Holmdel in NJ and Brandywine Creek State Park in DE are tough.

Belmont Plateau in Philly is another challenging course in our area. The first climb up FlagpoleHhill is fine. You go into the woods and climb Parachute Hill and come streaming down Suicide Hill on the other side. When you come out of the woods and get to Flagpole Hill the second time you are fried.

The first mile at Brandywine is fine. The second mile includes Maintenance Hill and then a second hill after you cross the road. You reach that top of that second hill and it continues to incline to the 2 mile marker. It's as tough a 2nd mile as you'll find on any cross country course in the region.

Ches and the Rosas obviously ran Holmdel multiple times. I recall the Rosas ( maybe just one?) running Belmont once. Alan Webb ran Belmont but I don't know of his time compared to Rosa. Did Ches ever run Belmont?

Sunken Meadow

when i ran xc my team dreaded bowdoin park, bear mtn and VCP.

all of them had brutal hills of different breeds.

Some of the hardest I've run are Van Cortlandt with the cemetery hill and the back hills, Half Moon Bay, where there is a hill so steep that almost everyone had to walk up it, and especially the Hereford XC course in Maryland, with maybe two extremely steep hills.

Holmdel is tough, but Brandywine Creek is much harder. At last year's invitational in early October, only three boys broke 17. Plenty of people break 17 at Holmdel in October.

Holmdel's not too bad. Belmont Plateau is much tougher, as is Lewis Morris Park in NJ. From what I've heard, Hereford is far tougher as well.

PaAlum wrote:

Pennsylvania State course at Hershey park is brutal

The OLD state course...the one that wound up and down the hillside in front of the Hotel Hershey.

This...enough said

bigtool05 wrote:

Holmdel's not too bad. Belmont Plateau is much tougher, as is Lewis Morris Park in NJ. From what I've heard, Hereford is far tougher as well.

Belmont Plateau is a bi7ch.

Times at Woodberry Forest where the VA independent schools state meet is held are usually slow as well, its rather steep.

Holmdel is NOT that hard of a course. It's only hard if you sprint the first hill like an idiot and then die on mile 2. And the bowl is overrated- you get a big downhill going into it so it's not that bad. In reality, it's just 10 meters right at the top of the bowl that it gets REALLY steep. After the bowl, the course is flat/downhill for the whole last mile, allowing you to recover a bit and making it a fast finish. The scariest part about holmdel is really just not falling in the roller coasters or tripping over a tree root in the woods.

Use the search function...this topic has been done many times before. And all it reveals is what was the hardest course that the person ran on themselves.

Sunken Meadow, much harder than Holmdel and Van Cortlandt from my experience.