Wejo's comment on Foot Locker West

was there .. wrote:

you could walk this course ... but NOT run it ... no way ...

So you could walk up the hills but NOT run up them? Man, I knew that CA guys were fair weather xc boys, but this is ridiculous.

You apparently don't know much about Southern California geology. Southern California has a lot of areas that have a wonderful clay soil that is similar to concrete when it's dry and incredibly slippery and soft when wet. I have run XC on Camp Pendleton in hills similar to Mt. Sac where you literally could not run or walk up the course because it was so slick. We had to go off the trail and walk up the hill pulling ourselves up on the branches of the sagebrush to get up the hill. That probably is not the type of run you want for a national championship qualifier, although it was quite amusing for the race that I was in. On the matter of spikes, they are not permitted for CIF races because of liability concerns by the schools. They are permitted for Footlocker.

mcgato wrote:

How many of the runners had racing flats to run on the roads? I'm guessing everyone had spikes for a XC course, but racing flats?

I ran years ago in ohio. I always had racing flats, spikes, and trainers when I went to a meet. To take anything less would be iresponsible. Most of the time I ran in spikes but I did come across a couple courses that flats were the better choice.

SoCal Pete,

I usually agree with you when you response on letsrun (because you are usually sensable) but not this time! I cannot believe they ran the Footlocker West regional race on the road! Are you kidding me! Is that the only XC course in the area? Come on! Running on the road was a very very weak excuse and insult to those of us who would of enjoyed running on such a course (believe it or not)!

I think the "real reason" the race was held on a "a fast flat hard surface like a road" was to make sure "German" was going to be in the finals!...that's what I think!

sorry, but if very time it rains they cancel a XC race most of us have a hard time understanding it!....at least I do!

RealXCRunning wrote:

I cannot believe they ran the Footlocker West regional race on the road! Are you kidding me! Is that the only XC course in the area? Come on! Running on the road was a very very weak excuse and insult to those of us who would of enjoyed running on such a course (believe it or not)!

no, it's not the only cross country course in the area. However, when you have people coming from all over the West Coast, who have made travel and lodging arrangements, you do not just switch to the "other course" on Saturday morning.

Southern California hasn't had a lick of rain during the month of November, and Friday's rain, which was supposed to be in the AM subsiding by the afternoon, continued all day.

I've run the hills of Mt. SAC and Cal Poly. When it rains, it is simple the most God-awful stuff that you can imagine. It sticks to your shoes in clumps, and the bottom of your shoes will be covered by mud/clay that is easily an inch thick. And it will sometimes come off unexpectedly in mid-stride. Had any single runner headed down any of the hills with 1" thick clay on the bottom of their shoes, especially the back of Poop Out of Reservoir, they would have no doubt gone down, taking many runners with them.

Golf is very popular in Southern California, and the golf courses here are designed around the weather patterns, which is dry almost 99% of the time. They are not viable alternatives to real cross country courses, as running on them during the rain will make them unplayable for weeks. (Look up De Bell Golf Course in Burbank for the XC Nationals back in the 80s).

To spout off stupidd stuff like calling the West Coasters wussies for not running int he rain is really retarded. The Mt. SAC course is a known problem in the rain. think about it, does anyone else even know of any other site that has a 'rain course"?

geezer in SoCal wrote:

On the matter of spikes, they are not permitted for CIF races because of liability concerns by the schools.

Excuse me ... what? Common sense has truly taken a vacation in this country, and more in some parts than in others.

Pamela Andersons Left Nipple wrote:

[quote]RealXCRunning wrote:

The Mt. SAC course is a known problem in the rain.

Then you'd think they'd chose a course that could, you know, be run in the rain. Because it rains sometimes. Even in California.

Is it too late to order some food…

No?

Sweet!

I'll take an order of buffalo wings, a cheeseburger, and an order of fries...

Thanks.

Yo, you guys here that people from cali chew their food but don’t swallow because they don’t want to get fat and they may possibly all have VD so chewing may pop their lip and/or mouth sores. It’s weird to think that that many gay people don’t realize that we can see their bulge through their tight pants. Sacramento isn’t bad though; they have some nice track meets but goddamnit if there isn’t a Mexican for every friggin rock in L.A.

I think you are wrong to!

As far as I am concerned they (officals) compromised the integrity of the sport today! Maybe we should get rid of the sport if a XC race has to take place on a road, track, or possible indoors (ex: NFL football stadium)!

Example from last year:

Jager would of been a "shoe in" if the race would of been held on a flat fast road instead of that muddy mess they ran in at the Footlocker MW last year! I think the officals(cali) remember that so they didnt want that to happen to "German"! Guess what? It didn't because they guaranteed the fast runners a was nice, fast, and safe course for all the top guys! You see, in tough XC conditions the top guys/girls don't always win!...but the fast runners got what they wanted! Their fastest guys in and their(possibly) strong runners left out! Did you the NCAA XC last yr? That is another good example....but I guess you guys in Cali don't understand or are just a bunch of "mommies little choo choos"!

You want to put... a few more... ellipses in there... buddy...unless you're trolling.... in which case...good job...

I'll preface this with this: I'm from the northeast, and have never been to Mt. SAC. I think they made the right call. The northeast, midwest, northwest, southeast don't have courses like the ones in California. It seems like so many of them are hardpacked dirt, gravel, long sections of road. They hardly seem like XC courses at all. But they also don't have anything to make mud runnable- at least in most places there is some grass to help control some of the poor conditions. Having run on courses that were as bad as people are trying to make this sound, it isn't particularly dangerous, but it is pretty awful. I have had to run in courses where there was 3-6" of standing water, sloppy mud, slippery hills... you aren't going to have dozens of people hurting themselves because of mud, even with switchbacks and steep hills- anybody here run at the NY state meet at SUNY Utica in 2001?

However, the biggest reason I agree with the change is that the conditions may have affected the outcome of the race. Last year, DIII nationals was run on a horrifically muddy course, and having taken part in it, I was certainly affected by the course conditions. I'm not pretending that nobody else was, but to be frank, I'm not a particularly strong runner in really poor conditions. Its a mental thing I suppose. Anyways, the course conditions being so radically different would certainly have played a big part of determining who gets to go to Footlocker, so for that reason alone, it was probably a good thing they went to the road course.

you are crazy to!...some of you just don't get it!

.....How many fast XC runners did the muddy conditions effect their overall finish in the NCAA XC Finals last year?

.....ask York HS if the rain and muddy conditions effected their outcome last yr in NTN finals?..but I didnt hear any complianting!

.....ask Jager if muddy conditions effected his results last year at the MW footlocker regionals?

etc etc....

....so...... anytime their are bad conditions move the race to the road?....crazy! Freaking crazy!

PS: Heay NCAA officals....did you hear this guy?...next time it rains and it gets real muddy you better or should have the NCAA XC finals on the road!...OK!....on the road!

catza wrote:

Wejo,

With all due respect to your comments about CC being run in all conditions ect, you simply cannot run in the hills at Mt. SAC if they're soaked by rain. They're clay and so steep that you would have to slide down on your ass. You would have had kids sliding down the hill into a giant snowball and countless injuries or worse.

It's extremely rare to have this kind of rain this time of year there, but it's just the type of surface that it's not even close to safe to run on, period, in heavy rain.

You should check more into a situation before you spew your pithy comments about it.

First of all, I was the one that put the comments up. 2ndly, we didn't say they should have run the race on the course. We've gotten several emails stating the same thing as you- it was totally not runable - period.

But what's wrong with making a funny comment about it? Should we not rib our west coast brethren for running an xc race on a road course? We didn't say anything negative about it and clearly, there was no other option.

But xc is great because it's distance running at it's most natural essence. The fact that it had to be run on a road course is worth pointing out.

I don't get why you took our comments as so negatively. It wasn't mean that way.

RealXCRunning - The reasons they ran the race on the rain were these (and no others ... especially absurd ones such as making sure that German was going to be in the finals ... which he would have been on any course):

1. The course was not runable. No matter how much people on here talk about what kinds of courses other parts of the country are running on, it doesn't make the Mt. SAC course runable in the rain. I tried to jog it after a rain only a year ago. It was impossible. We had to walk the downhills, and we had to clear brick-sized hunks of mud off our shoes just to do that walking. I've run in the rain and on the snow and ice and through the mud and in sub-freezing temperatures and on all kinds of cross-country courses all over the country. They were all runable courses. Mt. SAC is not runable after a rain. If you think differently, then you are simply making stuff up in your head, and you obviously have no idea what you're talking about.

2. As another poster said, changing the course location at the last minute would have been a nightmare for everyone involved - and mostly for those who'd traveled to the meet. If you've put on a meet of this magnitude yourself, then you're conveniently overlooking this burden. If you haven't, then once again you're making stuff up and don't know what you're talking about.

Now, as for why the race is at Mt. SAC ... Because it's got the most tradition of any course in Southern California, and because everyone loves running there. Defaulting to the rain course is a risk that people are willing to take. If it bothers you that much, now would be a good time to start lobbying the powers-that-be for a change of venue in the future. But be prepared to be rebuffed. Because make-believe reasons for not running a course won't hold much sway.

Rojo - None of us Californians mind getting ribbed about our "fair weather" conditions. Or about our flat road race x-country courses ... with the caveat that the ribbing is well-intentioned. Yours was. Others - not so.

And then, of course, there's this: the actual Mt. SAC course is anything but flat. And our So Cal USATF Championship X-Country course is at Kenneth Hahn Park, with both steep and gradual hills, no flat spots at all, uneven grass the whole way, patches of mud and very deep grass, gopher holes, rocks, roots, and just about everything except cold weather and snow ... though I'm sure you can get that at some of our higher elevation schools, given that Southern California has higher mountain ranges than much of the country - and certainly much much higher than anything offered by our midwestern or eastern brethren. Perhaps some of you midwestern mountain goats would like to breeze up the Mt. Wilson Trail for the annual race to the top and then back to the bottom. Or the Mt. Baldy trail race. Or perhaps we should discuss the relative difficulty of the famed Van Cortlandt Park course in New York with ... well, how about Mt. SAC?

Seriously, it's all in good fun. Except that with some of the posters here it's not. They really believe these negative images of Southern California. And here's why: because they believe them. That's right. Not because they know anything about Southern California. But simply because they believe that thinking something about something is as good as knowing something about it.

Okay, enough from me.

Bash on.

2006 D3 nats anyone?

Pamela Andersons Left Nipple wrote:

To spout off stupidd stuff like calling the West Coasters wussies for not running int he rain is really retarded. The Mt. SAC course is a known problem in the rain. think about it, does anyone else even know of any other site that has a 'rain course"?

Pointing out that Mt. SAC is the only place with a rain course is not helping your cause. Do you know why no other place has a rain course? It's because everywhere else, especially here in the Midwest, people run on the same course no matter what the conditions are. Trust me, I'm sure we've ran through equally harsh conditions more times in the midwest as it possibly could have been there in the Golden State. Just admit that it was a pathetic thing to do for a cross country race and get on with your West Coast lifestyle.

Perhaps some of you midwestern mountain goats would like to breeze up the Mt. Wilson Trail for the annual race to the top and then back to the bottom. Or the Mt. Baldy trail race.

Perhaps you would like to go for an Ozark trail run with me SoCal Pete.

These conditions sound like a great time to put in the half-inch spikes, tape your shoes to your feet, throw away your watch, and get ready to run some nasty XC. For a qualifying race, though, I can see why you wouldn't want to have conditions so unlike what nationals will be.

abacus wrote:

These conditions sound like a great time to put in the half-inch spikes, tape your shoes to your feet, throw away your watch, and get ready to run some nasty XC. For a qualifying race, though, I can see why you wouldn't want to have conditions so unlike what nationals will be.

Sure that sounds fun until someone gets their foot stuck and breaks their leg. I once tried to run a tempo run on a dirt road that had turned to complete mud and twisted my ankle pretty bad. It wasn't watery puddles, but deep, sticky, thick mud. So if the condititions are anything like that was, I see how it would be impossible.

abacus wrote:

These conditions sound like a great time to put in the half-inch spikes, tape your shoes to your feet, throw away your watch, and get ready to run some nasty XC. .

you have to remember that mt. sac has a length piece of asphalt called the air strip. when was the last time you tried running down a paved street in a pair of spikes?

and to everyone else who thinks it was the californians being pussies.. anyone who knows that course well knows that you have to work the downhills relatively hard. The mass of humanity that is places 10-50 in that race coming down switchbacks would've been one big cluster f*** with runners going down left and right.

Manning up and powering through a flat mud section and trying to surge down a steep ass slippery clay slope in flats are two very different things.. Doing well in one is baller, attempting the other is utter stupidity.