USATF club XC debacle

Didn't realize this until browsing Strava this morning (probably because I was too cold to realize it at the time), there was a 17 mile an hour wins in the Master's race, a 13 mile per hour wind in the women's race and a 14 mile an hour wind in the men's race. And it was a steady wind too. Again, course was short, but conditions were abysmal, as was the footing.

Conditions in open men’s were actually fine. If there was any wind, I didn’t notice it (with 400+ guys on the track there were plenty of people blocking it). The masters and women’s races were rough, though.

The first 3 races of the day had the worst weather. The rain&wind probably peaked during the time they were trying to figure out how to reroute the races. It was pretty bad still for the start of the 3rd race (40-59 men) and definitely eased off considerably by the last race.

I used Google Earth to measure the track and came up with 1211m. They ran 832m to the FL on the 1st lap then 7 full laps. So, the total was 9309m or 5.78 miles if perfect tangents were run (which no one could in this race. The track was paved so those who only brought metal spikes were somewhat screwed.

Scheming to con his way to the next $4 million.

I find your rant mildly amusing given that you totally misunderstood the post that is "upthread." (no one said several were killed; they said it's a good bit of luck that no one was killed, given where the tree fell).

Is there video of the full masters race? There are more than a few finishers whose Strava posts show they finished a lap early.

I don't know why people here say it doesn't matter what distance an XC race is. All runners care about all their race times to some extent, especially on a track-like course in a 400+ person race where they can be pulled fast (and it looks like the top guys chose supershoes over spikes). Probably most middle-packers ran 8K PRs en route to the way-short-of-10K finish, and don't care at all about whether they placed 163/400 or 125/400. At least, it could give them confidence going into next season if they actually knew how they finished this season in reference to some time (w.r.t. difficulty of course). But there's no way of knowing how fast they actually ran on an improvised track loop where they have to run wide to avoid other runners and puddles/mud along the perimeter. If times "don't matter" for XC, they why are there clocks and course records? I don't see why it's that much to ask for an XC course to be measured to a precise distance. All you need to do is think up a fun route that is approximately that distance, wheel it and figure out where to place the finish line to make it exact.

In summary, what I'm saying is that XC is rather pointless for the bottom 90% of runners if the courses are

(1) super boring

(2) not intended to match any standard race distance, even just approximately

(3) such that runners could be covering wildly different distances

Like what's the point? Pay and travel to another state just to chug out an arbitrary effort in the pouring rain?

There were two Masters Men's heats: 60+ and 40-59. My vids will be posted today.

Why was their a men's masters 40-49 race and not a women's?

Really? That sucks if true…

numbers. all 40+ women could fit in one field. men too many. plus decided to do 8k for 60+, not sure about how that came about. maybe time on feet...

There were two Masters Men's heats (40-59 & 60+) because of the number of entrants. There were a total of 243 Masters Women, 334 Masters Men 40-59, and 245 Masters Men 60+. Also It was not fair 60+ men had to run 10K and Open Women only 6K. I proposed the separate heat and shorter course for 60+ Men to Mike Scott, then Chair of the XC Council, so such a wide line of starting boxes was not necessary back in 2015. It had been used ever since.

You can't control the weather of course. I do feel bad thinking about my buddy paying all that money to race in awful conditions on a short course. But that's the chance you take

That makes me feel better about my finish. I ran the entire distance and flashed the number of laps I had run at the officials every time through.

Tom, is there a way to report runners in the masters race who ran a lap short? I think it was an easy mistake to make (I'm not accusing anybody of doing it intentionally), but it's obvious in some cases and there's GPS/Strava evidence to confirm it.

Don’t you guys realize you can’t go off your GPS watches when you’re running on a track? The GPS can’t track the turns accurately. It also matters which wrist you have your watch on and which direction on the track you’re going. It’s a big bungle either way.

Who are you talking to? The Polo track is a known distance. 3/4 mile. Tom addressed the distance above. With the flooded insides, no one could run the tangents so race was probably around 5.85 miles and not 5.80, but whatever.

You raced the wrong way around the polo grounds. Should've gone counter clockwise for the full 10k. Still a great effort from the competitors.