Meets for the remainder of the season

Meets for the rest of the season.
Now that we’re nearly done with the early season Cross Country Invitationals, I’ll go over in more detail the rest of the season’s meets.

September 27: Coach Downey XC Classic … JV mostly
http://www.downeyclassic.com
Up until a few years ago this was called the Saints Small School Invite and was hosted by Saint Augustine High School. When the Saints Coach passed away, the meet was taken over by a former runner of his and is now known as the Coach Downey XC Classic. It’s for D-IV and D-V schools and is held at Morley Field, over parts of our League Course. Now, it includes races for both high schools with enrollments of 1500 or less, as well as Community Colleges.  In the past or girls team won the team championship more often than not, with the boys winning from time-to-time. Now, we use this a meet for those who need or want a race. We no longer try to win it as a team. Because our varsity runners now attend more high-level races than we did back then the varsity trains through it. That said, It’s available for anyone on our team who wants to race. The entry deadline is Monday, Sept 23^rd.  So, if you want to run I need to know ASAP. It’s a Friday meet, so there will be an early release. See the link above for the schedule and everything else about the meet.

October 10: Western League Cluster … Varsity and JV
This meet is the start of our league competition with other league schools.
The schools in the Western League are Coronado, University City, Cathedral Catholic, La Jolla, Serra, and Scripps Ranch.  None of the Clusters are optional. All of our Cluster Meets use the City Conference Cross Country Course at Morley Field.

Western League Girls JV Course 2.5 miles

City Conference Course 3.11 miles

Three of the clusters are for both our Varsity Runners and JV runners, this one,  the one on November 7, and the League Championship on November 14.  The Cluster on October 17 is for JV only. In the Varsity Races, we can enter more than the usual seven runners.

October 17: Western JV Cluster (see Oct 10 description)

October 25: Mt. SAC Invite – Varsity Teams Only
http://events.mtsac.edu/ccinvite/index.html 
Mt. SAC, in Walnut California, is one of the largest Cross Country meets in the world.
We’ll enter a boys and girls varsity team (7 runners each).

November 2: Postal 2-Mile Run at University City High School : Everyone
This is a series of 2-mile runs on the UC track starting at around 3pm and going into the night with the fastest races being run last. Optional, but a lot of fun. There is even a mascot race. More details when they send them.

November 7: Western League Cluster … Varsity and JV

November 14: Western League Championships … Varsity and JV

After the Western League Championships, everyone will be done except for the top seven boys and top seven girls who will run at the CIF finals and, hopefully, the State Meet.

November 23: CIF Championships at Morley Field
November 30: State Meet in Fresno

Races this week and your lying GPS

This Saturday we have two races, the  Mt. Carmel and the Woodbridge Invites.
 Since most of our runners will attend one or the other, we’ll have a pasta dinner this Friday at the Mullin’s house.
Quality Training this week will consist of a Tempo plus strides/hill workout tomorrow (I’ll send details later) and a Progressive workout on Wednesday.

Also, I’d like to take a team photo on one of our recovery days this week. We can do this at Tidelands or at the Del Rocks.

Now for something completely different.
At our 4x1 mile repeats last Friday, I was informed that the mile mark was before the point where I was timing.
Several of the GPS units the kids were wearing “proved” this.
This discrepancy has happened over and over, and I always say the GPS distance is wrong.
I shall now explain why, and hopefully, put this to rest.
You see, a GPS will give you an accurate reading of between 3 and 5 meters 95 percent of the time.
The other 5 percent of the time the reading can be off by as much as 10 meters.
Depending on your GPS and settings a reading is taken, at the most, every second.
This gives you a bunch of points that are connected to determine your distance traveled.
Because of the randomness of the points that are connected, the actual distance recorded by the GPS will always be greater than the distance traveled.  You can Google this and find the same info.
Look at the graphic I copied from the link I’ll give at the end.

The Red Line is the distance the GPS recorded; the Yellow Line is the actual distance.
The Red point-to-point path is longer than the yellow path.
If you measured a mile with a GPS, you would come-up several meters short.
By the way, your time is also a bit overestimated (shows a bit too fast). 
When I measure a path, I use the Google Earth measuring tool, which is accurate.
I also have a measuring device on my bike wheel that increments four times every time the wheel goes around.
This has been calibrated against a known distance and is also accurate.

My bike measurement always matches the Google Earth result.
Google Earth lets me set the course on paper, the bike lets me mark points along the course at training, and find the finish when it's not at an easy to find spot along the road.

Here is the mile path we ran Friday as measured by Google Earth.

To verify the Google Earth’s accuracy, look at the screenshot of our track with both the 100-yard football field and the 100-meter marks for the track.
They’re dead-on.

Click on the images for full size
 

Still not convinced, read this :-)

http://cincyhalfmarathon.com/GPS%20Accuracy.pdf

-Coach Green