Courses

In high school cross country there are only so many different courses that you can run on. My team runs on about six different courses throughout the season. Some courses we may only run on once but other courses we will run multiple times.

This year we are running on the same course in Iowa City four times. Running on the same courses multiple times in your season can be a good and a bad thing. It can be a bad thing to run on the same course many times if you don’t like that particular course. The Iowa City course that I get to run on four times this year is not one of my favorite courses. It always seems to be really hot when we run on that course. The course also has very little shade and by the time you start running your race the sun is normally setting or is about to set so the sun shines right into your eyes. It’s hard to run with the sun in your eyes because a lot of times to avoid the sun in your eyes you have to look down and it makes it hard to see the where you need to run on the course and to see who is in front of you.

A good thing about running on the same course all the time is that you become really familiar with the course. When you’re really familiar with the course it can make it easier to run because you know where you’re going and you normally know where the mile markers might be and know how close you are to the end.  If you know the course it also helps you to know when you should start sprinting at the end. Running the course for the second time can also help your race because you can know where and when you struggled on the course the last time you ran it. If you know that you slowed down a lot during one part of the course the next time you run the course you can try to speed up or keep your pace at the slower parts.

Running the same course is good for your race because you are more familiar with the course. It can be nice to run the same course if you run faster races at the course. It’s not very fun to run the same course a lot if it’s a hard course or if the course has a lot of hills.