SPECIAL 2007 NOTE: due to the leveling of the woods area encompassing the second mile of our old course, we've had to cobble together an alternate course for this season. Mainly the brainchild of boys' coach Steve Lane, it's a testing 2.9 miles, mainly looping around the athletic fields at CC, with several loops up a woodsy hill trail. It's a bit dull, but VERY spectator-friendly, using the same start and finish as the old course, and still all on spikes-friendly natural surfaces. It's hoped that, once the fields project is completed, that we can find some woods still left to run through in a reconfigured course that will bring back a little more variety and retain the virtues that have made the CCXC course one of the best in the DCL.
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The CCXC course is 2.67 miles, all on natural surfaces, suitable for spikes. The start and finish are in the same place on the lower playing fields of CCHS. On this map, the first mile is in yellow, the second in red, and the final .67 mile in blue/green. Runners go about 100 meters (up on this map), take a hard left around a backstop, and proceed to circle the whole lower-fields area, then turn (following the line of the woods) and run UP a hill towards tennis courts, taking a RIGHT down through the woods back to the lower fields. (800 meters is just after you turn down into the woods.) Emerging from the woods runners head LEFT and basically circle the fields in the opposite direction (now clockwise), back through the start and across the softball diamond, following the line of the woods and reaching the one-mile point, shown here as the line turns red. Soon runners take a LEFT into the woods, heading up a hill - the first of a number of hills in the woodsy second mile. Runners would follow the lower red line shown here first, moving in a counterclockwise direction, emerging briefly onto the upper soccer practice field area but immediately turning left back into the woods and re-joining the path they ran up entering the woods to now run down back to the lower fields. As they emerge from the woods runners go RIGHT and then turn back up into the woods after twenty yards to run back UP the path they ran down in the middle of the first mile. The second mmile ends as they come out of the woods at the top of that last sharp rise, in front of the upper tennis courts. A downhill stretch of about eighty meters leads to a sharp turn back at the bottom of the hill, where the runners follow a path just inside the driveway (on grass, separated from the drive by a low metal fence), back across the base of the hill and down onto the lower fields for the last, clockwise, tour around those fields back to the start/finish line.
One of the shorter DCL home courses, the CCXC course is also one of the most demanding. The large hill in mile one isn't the main challenge - that comes in the up-and-down second mile. Spectators get great views of the first mile and the final 800 meters from the hilltop just across the drive from the lower gym, which overlooks the lower playing fields area. Check out the link to all-time course bests to see what good runners have done over the last decade on this course.
NOTE: Due to upcoming construction of new fields in the woods above the school, our course will be changing during the 2007 season (grrr...). Watch this space for updates - as of mid-summer, we're still hoping to be able to host meets, whether in an altered on-campus setting OR possibly at Great Brook on what we created forthe 2006 DCL meet.