Van Cortlandt Park aka Vanny

With the brisk temperatures rolling in this weekend, Fall is truly upon us. And with that, we are six weeks away from Foot Locker Regionals. As always, they are being held at one of the most storied courses in the country, Van Cortlandt Park or just simply "Vanny". Racing there is special. An opportunity to test yourself against the scores of people who have raced through the park and experienced the "Back Hills". The "Back Hills" is the location where the race generally breaks open. The finish is deceiving. When you slip out of the woods, you can see the finish in the distance, but it is not as close as you wished it was, it is still about a half-mile away.

The following piece is excerpted from "Cross Country Running" by Marc Bloom, editor, The Harrier:

"Van Cortlandt Park is America's cross country Mecca. It is not paradise by any means. It has not the prettiest course nor the most difficult. It does not have the best facilities. It is just that it lies smack in the middle of the most populous megalopolis, in an area rich in cross country tradition, where sponsors and those of influence have chosen to operate. Located as it is on the fringe of New York City, Van Cortlandt is most accessible. Public transportation funnels there from every neighborhood in the city. The subways are close by. Highways and turnpikes touch the park from distant locales in neighboring states.

"Therefore, in a given season, more runners race its trails than any other cross country site in the nation, if not the world. There are several distinct programs that merge at "Vanny" as it is called. The biggest is for the high schools. Manhattan College (and before it NYU), and Fordham University sponsor meets with a combined entry in excess of 10,000....over the "time tested" 2.5 mile course.

"At the Foot Locker Northeast Qualifier the high schoolers move up to the 5000m, the same route now used by women competing at the collegiate level. Essentially, it's the first 3.1 miles of the famed five mile course. When the men's college teams compete, they pass through the 5,000m finish area, then another two-mile loop remains. The flats are repeated, then along the cowpath a sharp left is taken up onto the infamous Cemetery Hill, a steep, rocky incline about 4.2m into the college run. "Cemetery" --that's the way it's referred to--just "Cemetery"--rises about a hundred feet during its length of about 300 yards. Its peak stands 150 feet above sea level. It's a killer alright, and the jibes abound. Runners die up there. They're dead and buried, laid to rest. Its name is so perfectly suited for the cross country assignment that one would assume running there had some historical relationship to it. Not so."