Cole Sprout 14:38 5K in CO at Liberty Bell

i got banned wrote:

going to liberty bell was one of those things you knew it was going to be HUGE, way bigger than state, 2A-5A, it was a super exciting atmosphere. by far the biggest meet i have ever been to in my hs and college careers

And therein lies the rub. For some, Liberty Bell is way bigger than state.

There are more runners at Liberty Bell than state. Some teams bring 100 or morer kids to Liberty Bell. Almost everyone brings their JV and C teams. There's at least one school in Colorado that only brings their C team. Ponder the meaning of that.

State does have fewer kids but pretty much all of the top kids. State in Colorado is probably not the best of all possible courses, but it's definitely not a road race. Teams that do very well at Liberty Bell tend not to do as well at state; no big surprise there.

Why anyone would want to run their ultimate race of the season early in September against a field that lacks several of the top runners in state is beyond me, but several do.

And, with all that hype, very few who ever run the course are willing to entertain the question that the distance might be off a little. Never mind the asphalt and downhill issues. If Colorado Track XC wanted to send article readership through the roof for one article, they'd go out with three or four different measuring devices and measure the course. One GPS, at least a couple wheels of different types, calibrated beforehand. Then we could put this discussion to rest (maybe).

Tullyrunners gave this a 193 rating.

His NXN last year was rated as a 199.

http://tullyrunners.com/XC2019/NationTopXcBoys2019.htm

Or, how about this? Maybe you and others could decide not to be neurotic and weird. Liberty Bell is awesome. It's huge, it's fun, it's a great tradition, and all of the CO kids get excited about it. Everyone puts it on the calendar and it's everyone's opportunity to run fast. Cole's race was fast as hell. Only autistic r3tards get hung up on the course being 20 meters short or whatever bulls#it you are fixating on.

In 2012 Cerake Geberkidane and his brother Ashii ran the Denver Public Schools Athletic League cross country championships at Bear Valley Park and put down the two fastest times run that year by a high school boy by more then 15 seconds. The fact that they were high school soccer players at the time especially Ashii who had not run high school cross country before that season and had only two races under his belt before he ran this time, caused such an uproar that the meet management chose to permanently remove the championship race from this site to not repeat the calamity that these two athletes caused. The fact that Ashii Geberkidane went on to win the Colorado High School State 5A boys championship that year with his brother placing 3rd was totally ignored by the people who created the uproar by saying that the times were too fast. What puzzled me was why did the meet management choose to give in to public dissent and move the championship meet that was spectator and parking friendly, centrally located and very competitive only to move it to one of the hardest inner city courses that I have ever witnessed, the kids had to wade into and out of a creek two times before they reached the finish line.

So I wonder what the commotion, after reading four pages of banter about the legitimacy of a time run in early September by a person who started out ranked as the number one high school cross country male athlete in the nation, is about?

Is the Liberty Bell Invitational cross country course fast? No duh!!

Is Cole Sprout one of the fastest high school male distance runner in the Nation? You will get no argument out of me!!

Is this going to be Cole Sprouts last distance race ever and is he going to rest on his laurels and his time run at a Colorado Invitational run at altitude against lesser competition in the early part of September or does he and his coaches have an ambitious schedule for him to compete in Colorado and across the nation all the way through December? Well, lets hope for the latter!!

I have thought in the past that there might be some argument that Sprout hasn't always peaked perfectly. Tough to tell because he's always so good, but he ran faster at Desert Twilight last year than the NXR Southwest regional. Maybe he was holding a bit back in the regional race knowing nationals was upcoming, or maybe DT was a better temp or something.

you sir are a seriously pretentious douchebag.

you are insulting my ability to accurately use the distance measuring tool on google earth, then mock me with this attitude that your wheel that was calibrated on CUs track is THE only thing accurate...douche bro

i have used the path feature on google earth HUNDREDS of times, to hike to lakes, boulders, peaks etc...never off by more than 10ft or so....where the f*ck do you get 80m?? that my friend is pretty f*cking pathetic if you are off that much on HIGH DETAILED SATELLITE IMAGERY.

now to show you how arrogant your claim is

https://www.engineersupply.com/Measuring-Wheel-Recommendation.aspx

"Though, under IDEAL conditions, measuring wheels can be accurate to within 3 inches per 100 feet"

that said IDEAL you f*ckwad, you said you calibrated on CUs track, did you do a full 5k on the track or just 100m? my guess is just 100m cause your a f*cking moran. i used our wheel in hs to help my dad measure our cross course, it ended up being 100m LONG, so annoyingly we had to use a 100m tape.

so just humor us all and do the math, 3 inches per 100ft.....well a 5k is 16404.2 ft....so tell me how off your worthless wheel is

i got banned wrote:

i have used the path feature on google earth HUNDREDS of times, to hike to lakes, boulders, peaks etc...never off by more than 10ft or so...

Hey dummy, how would you know that it's never off by more than 10ft or so

Settled down there cowboy!

I wouldn't take a google earth measurement as accurate at all, nor a garmin.

It's not that big of a deal anyway. It's XC and XC courses are rarely accurate, nor should it matter.

I remember when the state XC course was like 200m short in 2003 or so. Good times. Fast times.