After hosting the MileStat.com Cross Country Invitational for the past several years at Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield, meet management has decided to move the event to Pole Green Park in Mechanicsville for the 2013 event on the date of Saturday, October 19th. Pocahontas State Park has been a great venue to host the event and the course itself was one of the best places in the state for runners to achieve personal bests and season best times, but the venue had its limitations with parking, traffic and other issues to prevent the meet from growing any further than it had with just under 2,000 runners from over 50 schools. We believe the move over to Pole Green Park will allow us to handle having a mega invitational with more teams, runners, and spectators to grow the meet into one of the top and largest invitationals in the state of Virginia.
Pole Green Park has traditionally been viewed as a slightly slower course than Pocahontas State Park locally, but as past Central Region Championships have shown when there is great competition and the weather conditions are right, the course can run very fast. Pole Green Park has hosted many district and regional championships as well as played host to the USATF Junior Olympic National Championships. However, Pole Green Park has never played host to a truly large-sized invitational meet during the regular season as prior years has primarily hosted invitationals in the 10-25 school range or smaller weekday meets. We believe that if we bring the type of fields and competition in quality and size as seen in the previous MileStat.com Invitational and grow it even more, the perception of Pole Green Park will be changed and seen as a great course to run personal and season best times on just prior to championship season. The park management and Lee-Davis parents have done a great job over the years maintaining and improving the running surface for the Pole Green Park 5K course, which has had an effect on improving times each year.
WIth the new conference and sectional/region alignment, expect Pole Green Park to play host many seasons to those championship meets which many schools not from the former Central Region will be looking to have an opportunity to preview their future championship meet course at the MileStat.com Invite for one of the first times. Just with any other MileStat.com hosted meet, your team's attendance and meet entry fees help add revenue to the MileStat.com coverage budget throughout the cross country and track seasons. Few if any meets' entry fees have such a greater common good impact on the growth and promotion of the sport in the state of Virginia than at a MileStat.com event. Please consider bringing your team to the 2013 MileStat.com Cross Country Invitational on Saturday, October 19th at our new venue in Mechanicsville, Virginia at Pole Green Park.
Course Map:
Video Tour (note: Made 5 years ago)
