AnotherMastersGuy wrote:
I ran it. The course was more challenging than it looks on a map or on a video. The grass was a bit soft and the little hills came in rapid succession in the inner loop. Still, it is fast compared to some CC courses, but definitely slower than a road race. It was ALL grass (tough to do in So. CA) and very spectator friendly. Obstacles were not an issue. If a 2k loop course is required, you can only cover so much terrain. This seemed like a decent choice given the constraints.
I also ran (actually, I was an "also ran"), and I would agree with most of this. As long as USATF is married to the idea of a 2K loop, there's only so good a course is going to be. Even when the championship was at Van Cortlandt in 2006, the course they used wasn't the revered,
legendary layout.
I don't recall a lot of ducking around tree branches, perhaps two or three spots; but as others have noted, I suppose the course could have been adjusted slightly, or the offending limbs trimming. I did not find the turns to be so so sharp as to cause any loss of momentum, but then I wasn't going all that fast.
My GPS recorded the course significantly long, at 5.23 miles, but some of that discrepancy may have been because courses with lots of turns tend to read long. I'm thinking that I ran faster than my time would indicate, but that's probably just wishful thinking. Some have noted, that time is irrelevant in cross country, and I suppose that's correct. But it makes a difference to someone like me, who has no hope of getting onto the podium, whose only reward for the effort is a decent time to show for it.