Some of you may remember my post earlier this summer about my "opportunity" to measure the Illinois High School Association's (IHSA) State Final course at Detweiller Park just north of Peoria, Illinois.

The background is as follows: The IHSA has held the high school State Final meet at Detweiller Park since 1970 and on a 3 mile course since 1971. The boys' course was largely unchanged from them until 2003, when the introduction of chip timing required a relatively minor reconfiguration of the course. The course record is held by Craig Virgin, who ran the course in 13:50 in 1972.

The course is relatively flat (approximately 20 feet of elevation change from highest to lowest point) and generates fast times in good conditions. It was rumored to be short of the 3 mile advertised distance. The IHSA claims to have has the course measured by civil engineering students from Bradley University, and held to their contention that the course was, indeed, three miles.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that the rules of the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) state that a cross-country course should be measured "Down the middle of the course". This, of course, is at odds with the rules of USATF and the NCAA, which state that courses should be measured using the Shortest Possible Route.

Thus you have the recipe for confusion and controversy: People who don't know how to measure a course, using inaccurate equipment (measuring wheels) trying to measure to at least two different standards.

In November, 2007, at the state meet, Chris Derrick won the state championship with a time of 13:52- just a couple of seconds off Virgin's 35 year old record. The DyeStat message boards heated up; the question was who ran faster? It became clear that only an unbiased measurement of the course by someone who knew a little about course measurement could provide credible information regarding the current and historical length of the courses. A number of us formed a task force with the goal of putting the controversy surrounding the length of this course to rest. I managed to visit the course three times over the winter, stopping by Peoria on my way to or from somewhere else, and took pictures, readings, and notes.

Among the co-conspirators in the effort was Tony Jones, the co-publisher of Illinos Prep Top Times, which is now DyeStat Illinois. Tony was aware of the efforts of John Tucker, the head men's cross-country coach at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, to develop a system that would allow times on various cross-country courses to be compared against each other. Part of the process involves rating the course, and part of that process involves measuring the course.

John has compared various course measurement techniques and strongly prefers the steel tape. My experience, of course, has been with a calibrated bicycle. We agreed to meet in Peoria the weekend of July 19 and 20 to measure the course at least those two ways.

John brought an assistant, Roger Koehler, and I worked with Gary Finley, another former high school runner who had developed an interest in the project. John and Roger began toi measure the course with a steel tape in 50 meter increments. Gary and I set out a clibration course on a straight paved course north of the park. I calibrated on the course we set. Then I rode to the course and re-calibrated over the first 300 meters of the course as measured with the steel tape. My numbers were about 0.83% off, with the bicycle requiring more counts to cover the 300 meters on grass than on asphalt. I measured the course four different ways that afternoon- the current and historical course on both the NFHS and USATF line. John measured the current course on both lines. I recalibrated on the grass course.

Our numbers were close- my lengths were about 6 meters shorter than John's on both courses- but I was mre than a little concerned about the inconsistencies in my calibration data. USATF's procedures call for calibration on a paved surface. What if the race course isn't paved? So, you calibrate on the grass surface. Some parts of the Detweiller course were hard, solid ground. Others were soft. Some places were grassy. Some had been worn bare. How do you find a surface on which to calibrate that accurately reflects the surface you'll be measuring on?

Add to that another interesting experience I had earlier in the year on a crushed limestone path in Chicago's Licoln Park where the measurement numbers changed as the surface thawed and I've come to a conclusion: If your bicycle wheel leaves an indentation on the surface you're measuring on, you probably shouldn't be measuring on that surface with a bicycle. I do not think I would measure a cross-country course with anything but a steel tape.

We think we put together a pretty comprehensive report on the measurement; it's posted on the DyeStat Illinois site.

John Tucker called me earlier this week to see if USATF course measurers could be enlisted to help measure cross-country courses in the event a coach or event director wanted his or her course rated. I ran it by Gene and Pete and Pete suggested we put it up on the board. So here it is. It's outside our charter, but it definitely falls under the umbrella of using our expertise to benefit the sport and its participants. Please weigh in with your experiences and opinions.

Jay,

Interesting topic! Having been a Harrier in high school (Iowa), I am very familiar with x-c courses. Now, having measured over 100 courses, I have that experience to weigh, also.

My concern is similar to what you found with your various calibrations - non-paved surfaces affect measurements quite a bit. I did a course in the last month, and had to measure uphill, most of the way. I have solid tires, my co-measurer has pneumatic. While we calibrated on the same flat, paved course, as soon as we began riding uphill, there was a pronounced difference in measurement.

I am sure this will also be the case for x-c courses. As you mentioned, there are portions that are hard-packed, and other areas that are long grass.

Due to all the inconsistencies in surface on many x-c courses, I don't think any calibration course will yield a course accurate to our SCPF standards. For that reason, I think the only ways to accurately measure a course are with a steel tape or survey equipment. Since there are many turns on a course, I don't think survey equipment is feasible.

If someone wants to compare and rate courses, I think a steel tape is the only way to go. Then, you should be able to be confident (if experienced measurers do the measurement) that the measurements are accurate. But, I don't want to measure 5k courses with a steel tape. So, while I applaud the effort to rate courses, I don't want to measure a bunch of them. Schools don't have much money for their athletic programs, and my time is valuable to me. I don't see this as a good fit for our services.

This is good topic and I will add it to our agenda for the upcoming USATF meeting in Dec.

Having coached XC for many years I have some interest here. I understand our way of measuring will not be perfect, but I feel maybe we could issue a Certificate just for XC courses. I have seen way to many XC courses stated to be a 5k and it wasn't even close! At least our methods would provide relative accurate courses, however these would not be eligible for records that our recorded by USATF.

I have noticed that my most repeatable and accurate results come on my road bike with skinny 20mm tires pumped up around 100 psi.
But for XC courses maybe balloon mountain bike tires pumped up to 65 psi would be more reliable than road bike tiers that would tend to sink into soft surfaces.

No disagreement with James on the mountain bike tires, and the mountain bike would probably be a lot easier to ride over the grass surface than my hybrid was.

But the issue would still be there. A hard surface is a hard surface, and, unless you're riding on very soft asphalt, chances are that your tire will deform the same way on any hard surface. Even a wide tire will deform differently on hard earth than it will on soft earth or grass. It's impossible to calibrate on exactly the same surface as you measure.

It's nice to be nearing the end of my race scoring season and to be able to monitor these discussions again. Two thoughts come to mind after reading about Jay's initial post:

1) Was Chris Derrick's 13:52 run done on a longer course than Craig Virgin's 13:50? I was there for Mr. Derrick's run; it was an amazing performance!

2) Couldn't measuring a cross-country course with steel tape be done much more quickly by having multiple pairs of people, each with their own length of tape, staggered so that the position of the end of one pair is the position of the start of the next? For example, if you could arrange in advance for a team of 20 people, each pair with a single 100-meter tape, to chain their tape measurements together, you could effectively measure 1Km pretty quickly. You'd have to have sturdy metal posts embedded in the ground to measure around curves, but high-profile meets usually have those set up ahead of time anyway. It wouldn't take much time to train a willing pair in the proper technique; certainly much less than it takes to train them to use a calibrated bicycle. My experience is that high-profile cross-country meets have plenty of willing and capable personnel than can be tapped. Of course, it would make us all more comfortable if we knew an experienced road measurer was ensuring that the path covered by the tapes adhered to the shortest path the runners could take.

It's cross country. Whether or not it rained the day before the race and how long the grass is will make much more difference than the course being 20 meters too long or too short.

The issue is not trying to get high-profile courses within 5 meters of the stated distance. The issue is trying to get hundreds of high school courses somewhere close to 5k rather than 2.75 miles.

I agree with Mark. I do the results for the teams in our local high school conference, and when I plug in the reported course distance for the results many of these HS underclassmen are running world-class times.

We decided 25 or so years ago that, at least for road races, "the course is short" is not acceptable. In the last 25 years, we've pretty much convinced the running community of that.

Mark is correct, of course. A few meters matters less than the nature of the course and the conditions that day.

I was standing at the chute at Northside Park in Wheaton last Saturday morning before the races and one of the coaches jogged up with a measuring wheel. I asked him what he had come up with, and he said about 143 meters longer than 3 miles. 4828 + 143 = 4971.

I measured the same course a few years ago with a bicycle calibrated on asphalt and got 4916 meters. The course has not materially changed. My experience in Peoria tells me that a bicycle calibrated on asphalt will measure long on grass. So my measurement was probably as much as 40 meters long.

So how long IS this course? Looks like it's time to drag a tape over it...

quote:

2) Couldn't measuring a cross-country course with steel tape be done much more quickly by having multiple pairs of people, each with their own length of tape, staggered so that the position of the end of one pair is the position of the start of the next? For example, if you could arrange in advance for a team of 20 people, each pair with a single 100-meter tape, to chain their tape measurements together, you could effectively measure 1Km pretty quickly. You'd have to have sturdy metal posts embedded in the ground to measure around curves, but high-profile meets usually have those set up ahead of time anyway. It wouldn't take much time to train a willing pair in the proper technique; certainly much less than it takes to train them to use a calibrated bicycle. My experience is that high-profile cross-country meets have plenty of willing and capable personnel than can be tapped. Of course, it would make us all more comfortable if we knew an experienced road measurer was ensuring that the path covered by the tapes adhered to the shortest path the runners could take.

Cross-country courses are usually loops of one kind or another. I'm wondering if one team per loop might be the way to go about this...

There is no fool-proof way to accurately measure cross-country courses. Half the problem is the surface negating use of a calibrated bike and the other half is the way turns are set up...and the third half is determining & taking straight lines where available.

Having said that- I'd go w/a fiberglass or steel tape as the #1 way to accurately measure a cross-country course. Secondly would be a measuring wheel calibrated on a sampling of the same surface as the course. Truth is, it'd be helpful to compare measurements of the same course using both.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: scott hubbard,