The campaign has officially begun. In Florida, August 11 was the first day of high school cross country practice for the 2014 season. The champions have already been out piling in the miles, but the date serves as notice that the season is really coming. Every high school runner in Florida woke up on Monday the 11th with 96 days till the State Finals on November 15. 96 days to keep an appointment at the State Meet, just outside of Tallahassee in Apalachee Regional Park.
What's waiting in Apalachee Regional Park for the athletes?
There have been some changes. This will be the third State Cross-Country Championship in Apalachee Regional Park. There were big changes to the course after ARPXC's first State Meet in 2012. For the 2013 season, the opening 700 meters were straightened, the entire course was widened, turns became gentler or disappeared, and most of the course was covered in crushed oyster shell. The finish line had to be moved east out of an oak hammock. In the oak hammock itself, Leon County removed an enormous live oak so that the course could be a little wider at the 400-meter mark.
Leon County has continued to improve the course, but this year's changes are subtler. There has been some tinkering to improve drainage, but athletes probably won't notice that. What no one will miss, though, is that there is a lot less crushed oyster shell and a lot more grass.
ARP XC Playground - View from the Starting Line/Field #1 in 2014
After a bad year in 2013, the grass has made a comeback. In the field where the race starts, Field #1, the opening straight is covered with a thick green carpet. Some of this growth is weeds mowed short, but an awful lot it is grass. There are stretches that any suburbanite would be proud to have as a lawn.
After 400 meters the course passes through the oak hammock and into Field #2, where the grass isn't doing nearly as well. The big change is around 800 meters, though. In 2013, this was a wide, crushed oyster shell road along the "moat" at the rim of the old landfill. In 2014, it's grass. Leon County sodded the road with turf salvaged from the football fields elsewhere in Apalachee Regional Park, and installed an irrigation system to keep it green and growing. What used to be a bright, white road now looks like a golf course fairway.
800 Meter mark - the course is now being filled in with grass - (L) 23 Nov 2013 (R) 13 Aug 2014
Where there was crushed oyster shell on the moat road is now covered in grass. On the rest of the course orange clay has started to replace the shell. No one is removing the crushed oyster shell, it just isn't being replaced.
Much has stayed the same. The layout of the course is the same. And "The Wall" is still there, the sudden climb up the escarpment that rings Lake Lafayette.
Change is no stranger to the Apalachee Regional Park area. The Wall was carved out in a past geologic era, when Lake Lafayette was a river delta. Humans arrived and found the area congenial for settlement; about 40 mounds built near the lake by Native Americans testify to their presence. During the Territorial Period Lake Lafayette became the center of cotton culture, and the Apalachee Regional Park land was part of a plantation owned by Thomas Jefferson's grandson Francis Eppes. Eppes later had a crucial role in the founding of the school that became Florida State University, whose cross-country runners use ARPXC as their home course. Years after Eppes had moved on to Central Florida, the land was used to run cattle. The cattle left when Leon County acquired the property for a sanitary landfill. As landfill operation wound down, Leon County began developing the land as Apalachee Regional Park. For runners, the most significant historical change came in 2009, when the Apalachee Regional Park cross-country course was carved out of the old buffer zone for the landfill.
ARPXC will hold up better during weather now because of the additional grass. It may make the course a bit slower. You could plausibly argue that 2013 was the fastest year for ARPXC. The course then was practically a well-groomed road, in better shape than the dirt tracks we ran on in the Bad Old Days before rubberized surfaces. You could point to Sukhi Khosla's 14:59.45 at the 2013 FSU Cross-Country Invitational as evidence. On the other hand, Khosla's 1600/3200 track times of 4:05.96/8:59.50 are probably explanation enough for his 14:59.45. The course may or may not be fast, but Khosla certainly is.
Florida's best will be able to reach their own verdict soon enough. There are only 96 days from August 11 to November 15.
Northwest Florida Correspondent Herb Wills
Herb Wills' running career goes back to the 1971 boys' age-group mile at the Florida Relays. Since losing that race he has won the 1976 Florida High School class 4A cross-country championship, 1979 AAU USA junior titles in cross-country and the 10,000 meters, and the 1989 TAC USA 30K national championship. As a distance runner at Florida State University from 1978 to 1982, he was NCAA All-American three times in track and once in cross country, and won a silver medal in the marathon at the 1981 World University Games. Graduating Florida State with a degree in mathematics, in the following years Wills ran in the USA Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984, 1988, and 1992, and placed tenth in the Boston Marathon in 1989. After more than a few years of duty as a hurdle setter and lane judge at track meets, Wills discovered that the public address announcer not only got to sit down at meets but was also sheltered from the rain. Since that revelation you can hear him with a microphone in his hand at several track and cross-country events in the Tallahassee area. Writing is another activity you can do while sitting down, and Wills has written about running for Racing South magazine and Tallahassee's local newspaper, the Tallahassee Democrat.
You can read more running related tidbits in his blog at http://troubleafoot.blogspot.com/
Herb Wills NorthWest Florida Reports LINK
