NOTE: This is a reposting of an article that first appeared on July 31 of this year. But, since the state meet is now only three days away, it's time to pull the article back to the top again so that people who haven't seen the course can get an orientation before arriving this weekend. I will also be revising and posting the follow-on article about course viewing options. Look for that on Thursday.
It's a whole new race at the NPEC/BCRP venue!
It is now official. Colorado will have a new state cross country course for 2015. To be sure, though, it's not all new. The venue is the some, but the configuration is different--a lot different.
CHSAA indicated they may be changing the course. And change the course they did.
In following weeks, I will provide some thoughts on some viewing strategy options for the new layout, but for now I'll just try to explain the layout and let you spend some time drawing your own conclusions.
Slightly larger version course layout download
The racing will now begin just outside, and immediately south of, the stadium at the Norris Penrose Event Center. From there, the course heads generally eastward and slopes downhill (all eastward movements at this venue are generally downhill, while westward movements are generally uphill).
At a little over a quarter mile, the course makes a large, 180-degree turn and makes a beeline for the Athlete Village. The course runs directly down the middle of the Athlete Village (doors will be wide open on the east and west ends). Teams will still be able to camp in the Athlete Village, by the way, and may enter and exit through side doors.
From the Athlete Village, the course moves along the north side of the barns the greeted runners 200 meters into the old start of the course. Once past the barns, the runners will make a left turn and cross the creek over the bridge. This approach is being used to square up the access path to the bridge so runners aren't turning right as they hit the bridge.
Once through the creek and up the other side, runners approach the familiar main intersection of the course. Only this year, they'll be turning left, not right. Interestingly, the one mile point of the course is very close to where it's been the last three years.
Continuing past the one mile point, runners make a familiar right turn to head up Little Willis. Once up Little Willis, the course heads nearly due south to the familiar T-intersection. There will be no right turns at the T-intersection this year, however. This year, it's a left turn that takes the runners around the largest loop of the course, the southeast corner loop. The end of the loop skirts the boundary of the Norris Penrose Event Center and should allow some opportunities for viewing from the NPEC side of the course.
Close to where the runners hit the one-mile mark of the course, they will reach the two-mile point, only heading in the opposite direction.
Past the two-mile point, runners continue in a westerly direction up The Boulevard before making a right turn just before the dirt parking lot.
From this point on, the course is essentially identical to the end of the original course at the venue. Runners go over the bridges and through the woods, pop out into the open momentarily (the trail will be divided here as some runners will be going both directions at points in the race), then back down across the creek (no bridge on the incoming route), up Spike Hill, and into the stadium.
The new layout will, of course, be tested at the Cheyenne Mountain Stampede and may see some minor adjustments before state, depending on how the course performs.
Currently, there are several rough points on the new course layout. I've learned not to sweat those. The Cheyenne Mountain folks have proven their ability to identify and smooth out any and all rough spots on the course. There's no reason to think this year will be any different on that score.
One important thing to note is that this year's layout will run faster than previous years. Big Willis is no longer part of the course. The southeast loop, while not entirely level, is much more even than Big Willis. Also the course begins and ends at approximately the same elevation, taking away the net 47-foot gain that characterized the course layout in previous years. And, finally, there will be no bottleneck of the order produced by a narrow creek crossing at 400 meters. It remains to be seen if there will be any bottlenecking points on this course, but any that do appear should be minor by way of comparison.