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The top 8 boys in the South regional all
beat the pre-Webb record at McAlpine and 11 girls were under 18
minutes, the most ever in this regional. The South regional produced
8 of the top 12 times in the US for the entire season on the DyeStat
XC Leader List.
The super fast times were a hot topic of discussion on TrackTalk,
DyeStat's message board, with some questioning whether the course
was short and others saying it just showed that the South has risen.
Three who commented with authority were Rick Hill, founder and director
of the Great American Cross Country Festival, which was held twice
at McAlpine; Doug Speck, publisher of the great California site
Caltrack; and Stephen
(steveu) Underwood, DyeStat correspondent at the South regional.
steveu - Rick - Speck
Rick Hill
McAlpine. the real scoop
1. Our national governing body, the USTAF will not
certify any XC course, because it does not have a fixed curb.
2. No XC course is ran exactly the same from year
to year and even race to race. There are always subtle differences.
3. Over the past 5 years more and more crushed stone
has been added to McAlpine. Today, almost the entire course is the
stone surface.
4. The stone surface at McAlpine is at its best
when there has been a light rain the day before. This may result
in a few puddles, but the overall course mixture of sand, pea gravel
and clay softens, then settles and finally bonds to create an almost
mondo like surface.
5. Several trees have been removed from McAlpine
within the past two years providing a more straight line in two
locations.
6. The course has several wide sweeping turns that
are not bounded by trees, ridges or streams. Most of these curves
do not have rope or fabric barricades nor do they have a solid white
line. Therefore the exact course is open for interpretation by the
first runner. Consequently, over the past several years there has
been a slow inward creep of the course in these areas.
7. Measuring any course is problematic. The only
way to do it exactly is to measure from fixed post to fixed post
with surveying instruments and then the course would be reguired
to have fixed flags at each point to guarantee the actual measured
distance was ran. In this event a runner is always going run a little
further than the measured course.
8. I have measured McAlpine with a surveyor's wheel.
I have used three different wheels in meters and feet and have measured
it a total of five times and each time I came up with a different
measurement. My son Richard has been with me at times when it has
been meadured.
If I measured it another 50 times the distance would
be different becuase I am never going to walk three miles exactly
the same, even if I am trying to go point to point.
9. All wheels are calibrated to measure the distance
on a flat smooth surface, which is not what you find on an XC course.
10. Over the past few years more and more runners
from the south have learned to race McAlpine much better. One example,
is that runners are learning that if you run down the right side
of the starting area to the 400 meter post instead of moving to
the path at the 200 meter post, the distance is 7 meters shorter.
11. Before, 1999 the south as a group was behind
the rest of the nation,with many notable individual exceptions.
However, the south has become much more competitive following the
Webb wake and the variance between regions has been significantly
reduced. Today, if a runner from the south makes the top 8 in Footlocker,
he or she should know that they are within the range of the top
8 from other regions.
12. Last year two very smart young men, Richard
Hill a Senior finance major at Georgetown and Jim Martin, a Junior
finance major at Duke studied the average times of regional Footlocker
races over a number of years and then adjusted the times to a common
course, which was the Footlocker Nationals. One reason they did
this was because the entire south team had a reputation of running
fast in the region and then "chocking" in the nationals.
I have to be honest, they quickly lost me with their
ratios and standard mean deviations between courses, but they found
that the average time of the top 8 runners from the south needed
to be faster than other regions to be at the same level. They proved
the fact that in general the south was not choking at nationals;
they were simply behind the other regions as a group.
Again, I do not recall the exact details but their
calculations held up very well to the actual test. They accurately
predicted the place of each region in nationals and the winning
margins of average team times. Don't hold me to this but it seems
like a runner needed to run 12 to 20 seconds faster in the south
to be at the same level as the Midwest.
But before you go ripping me, Richard and Jim, have
fun and do your own research. Note: Math teachers there was a tricky
step that an obvious non math major would miss, so please help us
out!
13. McAlpine is about 80 meters short of 5K, the
way I measure it. The next guy may find it to be less or more. There
is no need to change it, you have too much history. It is McAlpine,
it is good and unique!
14. The course that the runners ran last weekend
is almost identical to the same course Alan Webb ran for four years,
it is the same course numerous All Americans and past and future
Olympians ran. The times as a group were the best every and not
one comment should take anything away from what those kids did.
Simply stated it was the fastest race ever at McAlpine and we will
all see how they stack up in Orlando. My guess if that they have
finally made up the gap with the rest of the nation.
Doug Speck
Since there have been a couple of points on how
fast folks are running
compared to the past in the Footlocker South and at Mt. SAC, let
me briefly
give you my ideas.
1) Running nationally at the prep level has taken
off in the distances I
think because of a couple of factors. The placement of national
level meets
such as the National Scholastic Outdoor Championships in Raleigh,
North
Carolina or the Great America Cross-Country series in the south
(Rick Hill
and family's fine event) over the last few years has helped kids
from the
south realize that people from other parts of the nation who generally
may
have run faster in the past put their undergarments and, for that
matter,
their outer garments on the same way as they do, and with a bit
more work why
not run as fast as those people. I was amazed over just a couple
year period
at the improvement of prep distance running in just the state of
North
Carolina, where I do not believe sub 4:20 milers and sub 9:20 2
milers
exactly fell off trees a decade ago when the NSO meet moved to Raleigh.
All
of a sudden there were people in that specific area who could compete
at a
national level against anyone. The "graduation up through the
ranks" in the
couple of races run in the distance events of a large end of season
high
school affair such as the NSO run by the National Scholastic Sports
Foundation of Jim Spier, Mike Byrnes, John Blackburn, AJ Holzer
and crew
served this sport very, very well through its infusion of athletes
from all
across the country, with a "pinch" by the locals of these
stars from other
areas showing them to be of the same ilk as the folks in their area,
maybe
having done a bit more or a bit more intelligent work. Students
who were
talented sophs can (or at least could a few years ago when I think
standards
were a bit softer in the NSO affair) compete at a lower level race,
then
graduate up the next couple of years to the top seeded contests,
where sub
4:10 and sub 9:00 efforts for males and corresponding times for
the females
were common place as the best in the country were gathered. Southern
Regional Boys Champ this Fall, Bobby Lockhart from Virginia, ventured
out to
our April Arcadia Invite in California last spring and took care
of the best
we could offer locally, with an 8:57 3200 that helped give him the
"travel"
and "different time zone" experience that will lead to
an ease of sense on
the starting line at a place like the Orlando Foot Locker Nationals
this
coming weekend and result in a higher place. As a matter of fact
the South
dominated the 2001 mid-April California prep affair, with Alan Webb
racing a
4:01.81 in that meet for a full mile, with the Jefferson twins from
Florida
also under 4:08 for a full mile. Yeah, how long ago could you have
won some
big money betting that runners from the south would go 1-2-3 in
the four lap
event in a meet where 28 kids during the day and evening affair
that one day
went under 4:20!!!
I have been involved with the Foot Locker National affair since
1982, and
there is a sense of national sophistication of southern distance
runners
today that is totally unlike that of a decade or two ago, and it
happened a
good part through the efforts of dedicated meet managers such as
the NSSF and
Mr Hill's group. I observed the same thing happening in the Rocky
Mountain
area due to the effort of the Simplot Indoor affair in the winter
in
gathering national level athletes and having them "show the
locals how it's
done." Soon, I observed a heck of a lot more Utah and other
Rocky Mountain
area athletes were doing it as good as anyone in the nation. Teenagers
are
amazing!
2) The national sense of running that efforts such
as John Dye's fine dyestat
web site and others that promote prep running, jumping, and throwing
across
the land have given the sport a "global sense" where information,
jibes,
results, discussion strings, etc. are shared in a way where a "community
of
runners" has developed. The Foot Locker folks, National Scholastic
Sports
Foundation, Great America group, and others who promote national
competitions
have done so very much, but the rest of the year a real sense of
the
importance of the activity of running, often ignored at the local
level, is
prominently promoted by the John Dye site and others. I happen to
bookmark
about a hundred California newspapers and view the prep sports sections
each
few days, and believe me, there are some of the best young runners
in the
world at their level who are basically ignored in our "ball
and team"
mentality that dominates the sports news all throughout the year.
Lists, a
sense of what top athletes are like through stories and interviews,
previews,
exciting race summaries, are tremendously motivating to athletes
who are no
more than a mouse click away from what is happening in a huge area.
No
longer are athletes in many states stuck in a narrow enrollment
classification, compete against those same 2A or 3A athletes all
season long,
even in multi-school affairs up through state, with the pecking
order
established early, and improvement not as much as when those same
folks can
measure themselves easily against the best in the entire nation.
The days of
ignorance in the local paper are long gone in the face of the world
that has
opened up due to modern communication technology. Athletes improve
when they
face top competition, have a sense of the price paid by top competition,
or
have a sense of what the top end really is. Success in distance
running is
due to a price paid over a period of months and years and the motivation
to
"be the best" no matter what the area, is suddenly available
with a click or
two of your mouse.
3) Faster times at Mt. SAC. It seems that there
have been adjustments in the
Mt. SAC course to make it shorter that the public was only aware
of in the
last month or two. Times suddenly became faster in the last year
or two at
that facility, much used for Championship competitions, including
the Foot
Locker West Meet. The Mt. SAC group has done a magnificent job of
maintaining the facility, which made it faster, but a reduction
in distance
that the athletes traverse two times has made it 15-20 seconds faster
than
when anyone ran it a few years back. I believe this will result
in two
all-time lists on the course. I've seen McAlpine-Greenway in the
south, but
have no understanding why the crew was so fast there this time,
except for
the sophistication I think southern runners have now compared to
some time
ago. Outside of the Foot Locker affair, I did not have the sense
of travel
to other national level affairs 15 years ago of athletes from the
south, such
as Lockhart, Webb, and crew to California during the last season--tried
like
heck for few years to get people like Teddy Mitchell (from Florida)
to come
to California. Many folks line up at the Foot Locker National starting
line
and the first time at the "truly big-time," occuring as
a twelfth grader, is
not a positive one, as the weekend and racing experience there is
quite
overwhelming. I remember they used to show a movie the evening before
the
Foot Locker Finals meet to the kids. It was of a year when the girls
went
out in the low 4:50's for the first mile in San Diego and the guys
in the low
4:20's (the leaders died, but those first mile times had an effect
on the
viewers). Oh boy, you could see the jaws drop, as the folks I would
introduce the next day (especially from the south) had flat out
best times
for those distances that was not close in many cases to what the
group that
one "movie year" had run for just the first mile of a
5000 meter event!
Two cents worth from a couple of angles I've not
seen for the improvement of
southerners in the distances.
Doug Speck
Stephen (steveu) Underwood
this year wasn't THAT big a variance from the past
A couple notes about FL South ... First of all, the
wholesale rewriting of
the McAlpine all-time list is a little deceptive. Beyond Webb's 14:43
and
14:52 going into this year, there have been a SLEW of times during
the
course's history between 14:57-15:05, particularly at FL South 99,
as well
as other races. The 4th-8th finishers in this race were within a couple
of
ticks of that.Second, despite the rains, the conditions weren't bad
for fast times --
better than most big-meet races at McAlpine. Humid, but mild temps
and
little wind. The pace was also pretty ideal. And it IS an accurate
course.
Most importantly, a deep and very talented field.
Yes, there were some
surprises, but most of the top 8 have already broken 9:05 on the
track.
Several have run between 14:40-15:05 on other courses.
Rumor has it that even Debole, who has less credentials,
ran close to that
in a time trial recently, so he's also a strong sub-9 candidate
for spring.
Fuqua in 7th has run 9:03. Thorne has run 9:05. Deak won Great American
(the slower race, but only a few seconds slower than Curtis). Steier
has
run 3:52. Admittedly, Hower and Keally were surprises, but we'll
see what
they do. I wouldn't be surprised if the South has two of the top
3 and 6 of
the top 15.
Though we don't have a Webb or Ritz next spring
to challenge 8:40, don't be
surprised to see a handful of these guys (plus Moore, Leal, etc.)
at
8:50-8:55, maybe better."
re the weather
To be a little more accurate, it rained all day
Friday on McAlpine, but not at all Saturday. The course was wet
and muddy in spots, but nothing nearly as bad as last year. There
was little wind, but it was kinda warmish and obviously humid as
heck. It was fairly fast, but there are faster courses out there.
I would say on a scale of 1-10, (1 being fastest),
McAlpine was like a 3 or 4 Saturday, and the NE and MW courses were
more like 8's or 9's. The NE and MW definitely had worse weather.
Foot Locker South
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