Several years ago, I was told that cross country spikes are illegal in California. Surprised by such a fact, I wondered why the state with the highest participation of high school kids in cross country would outlaw the staple of performance footwear for our sport.
At the time, I looked it up online and all I could find were bylaws and statements that spikes were, indeed, illegal in California. No explanation. Now, in the era of AI, I looked it up again: “why are spikes illegal in high school cross country in California?”
This is what showed up: In California high school cross country, running spikes are generally banned across most CIF (California Interscholastic Federation) sections because many course layouts include extended stretches of concrete, asphalt, or hard-packed pavement.
I don’t quite know what my feelings are on this, as my first reaction is that courses like these run counter to the point of cross country. Then I thought, but allowing that much pavement does open up a lot of developed land in any state for the design of a cross country course. Either way, it’s not good or bad, it’s just California’s state federation ruling. (We’ve got some peculiar ones here in Kansas as well!) Nonetheless, through my travels to meets, I’ve visited dozens of cross country courses all across the Heartland, and I'm confident in saying the following:
There’s just something about the Heartland here, that adds a little character to the real estate we run on.
First off, and specifically here in Kansas, we’re at the bottom of the drain. If you take the Rocky Mountains to the left and the Ozarks to the right, good ole Kansas sits at the bottom of that bowl. And at the bottom of that bowl is a thin layer of a type of dirt called loam, covering endlessly large sheets of bedrock.
So, aside from being prone to floods, yes, the ground in Kansas is hard and fast. Great for wheat growing. Sometimes tough for cross country-ing. This is not unknown to us folk around here but let me dispel a great myth about Kansas courses from other parts of the country: they are NOT flat.
Sure, we do have some flat ones, i.e. the course that the national caliber competition Olathe Twilight meet is ran on. But whether you’re scaling Cemetery Hill at the hallowed ground of Rim Rock, or the long gradual uphill near the beginning of the course at Johnson Country Community College that you have to do twice, finding a flat course in Kansas isn’t easy to do. Lots of rolling hills and lots of turns makes many Kansas courses very difficult to navigate.
But if you read any of the recent “Running the Tangents” interviews, a lot of the coaches seem to be wanting more of the challenging cross country courses over the smokin’ fast grass tracks that are popping up throughout the country.
The terrain of the Kansas course is also a bit unique. No Kansas coach I know of has designed a course on golf green-worthy Bermuda grass. And if you ever ask a local golf course about the possibility of hosting an meet on their greens—sans the Baldwin City Golf Course—you’ll probably get hung up on.
So, most venues around here are run on tall bunchgrass, chock full of deep-rooted weeds and the frequent patch of loam. And we haven’t even gotten to the bedrock yet which seems to “grow” more each year. As I said in an earlier article, “The Case for Carbon”, the pop, pop, pop sound you hear from super shoes on the track is often replaced by the crackle, crackle, crackle sound of spikes on a bedrock-laden Kansas cross country course. And if the bedrock doesn’t impair your balance, maybe any one of the millions of still-in-their-shell walnuts that grow plentifully around here will make your footing more backyard ultra-ish than 180 cadence-worthy.
I am very fortunate to coach at a high school where we have enough land on our campus to have our own course and, aside from the several species of long-rooted grass, every weed allowed in Kansas, millions of sunflowers, and the occasional decomposing roadkill near the starting line. (I tell our athletes those are just deer taking naps, so don't use the word "roadkill.") we also have quite a few wasps nests formed IN THE GROUND!!! I thought those guys only made nests under the wooden awnings of homes, or the underside of fence posts. But in the ground near the starting line of a cross country course. Didn’t we have some type of deal with the insects?
But don’t think the Kansas cross country course is all obstacles with hills and turns and nuts and insects. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve got some fast ones. The Olathe Twilight meet is one of those grass tracks with 5000 meters of long straightaways, high level competition, and a rock concert ending on 300 meters of track. Definitely a great venue for those speed demons.
Nonetheless, there’s a lot of character on the courses here in Kansas. In my endless discussions with fellow coaches in the Land of Oz, we’re often discussing where there would be another piece of farmland to put a 5k on. Rolling, rocky, rough, rugged, or ripe with roadkill. We’ll take it all. In fact, maybe those coaches were right in that cross country isn’t always meant to be done fast but also meant to be done hard, challenging, and, at times, slow and painful.
And if you don’t think you can run fast or hard or both on Kansas soil, go ask Jim Ryun or Adam Goucher what they think.
Stay fast and tough Kansas and see you on the course.
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