Should women run 10K like the men in NCAA Cross Country?

In response to her claim that female body performs better at longer distances, then why are they not running as fast as the man.

Nos to bring some actual facts to the discussion. In 2015 there was a gap of 2:30 from 10th to 10th-from-last. The gap in the men's side was 3 minutes. I think this supports keeping women at 6 and moving men down to 8.

As anecdotal evidence, none of the 40+ female teammates I had ever complained about not getting to run 10k. I would estimate that nearly half of them complained about having to run an "extra" 1k at regional and nationals, compared to the 5k they ran the rest of the season.

I don't really care how far they run, and if they decide is better for women to run 10k, that's fine. I just hope they don't change the sport based on the complaints of a few.

It's also not the fault of male track and cross country runners that women's football never caught on so there is an imbalance in the available men and women sports

Clearly no one commenting has read the history of this debate.

May I direct you here? (hint, it has nothing to do with football or title ix, and instead predates both by many years...)

https://medium.com/@Real_XC/separate-but-unequal-cross-country-s-great-distance-debate-dbd395c2767#.t0xq6dp1h

Or how about this article? Which talks about the difficulty the NCAA had in lengthening the women's distance by a single kilometer?

http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/NCAANewsArchive/1997/19970915/active/3432n09.html

Or how about this one? Which talks about the inequality of cross country race distances at the U.S. high school level...

http://www.runnersworld.com/races/men-vs-women-race-distance-an-equal-running-field

Weak google-fu LR's ... very poor form. It's already trending toward an even distance with USATF and IAAF regulations changing to 10K... it's only a matter of time.

hot-like-fiya wrote:

Clearly no one commenting has read the history of this debate.

May I direct you here? (hint, it has nothing to do with football or title ix, and instead predates both by many years...)

https://medium.com/@Real_XC/separate-but-unequal-cross-country-s-great-distance-debate-dbd395c2767#.t0xq6dp1h

Or how about this article? Which talks about the difficulty the NCAA had in lengthening the women's distance by a single kilometer?

http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/NCAANewsArchive/1997/19970915/active/3432n09.html

Or how about this one? Which talks about the inequality of cross country race distances at the U.S. high school level...

http://www.runnersworld.com/races/men-vs-women-race-distance-an-equal-running-field

Weak google-fu LR's ... very poor form. It's already trending toward an even distance with USATF and IAAF regulations changing to 10K... it's only a matter of time.

Of course it predates Title IX, just like segregation predated the CIvil Rights Act of 1964. Both laws were passed to change something that predated the laws passage.

The different distances are a crystal clear Title IX violation. The fact that there are trends to change it outside of Title IX are irrelevant as to whether it is a Title IX violation or not.

Distances are the same at all levels in track and have been for decades.

It's often overlooked that all age-group and youth cross country distances are the same for boys and girls whether it's the public elementary and middle schools, CYO, AAU, USATF, CCCNYC or someplace else. The difference is just about gone at the high school level but there are still a few states who haven't made the move. But it exists everywhere at the collegiate level. It's stupid and outdated in addition to a Title IX violation.

im a woman who ran D1 xc, but don't agree with the 10k idea.

It should be on time, so if you want women to move them up, move them up to an equivalent time, like the 8k. and men to 10k.

The nice thing about XC is that even the 800m runners can do well in it, if you move the distance to the longest distance in collegiate running you will eliminate a good chunk of solid 5k/6k runners.

i would love to think i would have done well at the 10k distance too, as I am not an 800m runner but 5k/steeple...but the truth is some of us cannot handle more than 50mpw, so the base for the 10k distance would be hard to establish

title ix sucks wrote:

That's not how it works wrote:

There'd be no more women's sports, and twice as many guys playing football.

Why can't women's sports stand on their own? Why shouldn't they? And why is having more guys play football a problem?

Because of selfish men who try to take everything away from women to try and boost their own weak egos as they don't like getting beat by the women.

His argument is with the title 9 legislation not with women athletes. He has a point, men as a whole are considerably more interested in sports and more motivated to train. This is clearly evidenced in xc as the men's teams are almost always more competitive and deep even at schools that devote more resources to women's track/xc. There are huge numbers of men at D1 schools who would love to play a college sport and would be more than willing to do the work even it meant always riding the bench or running JV. There are very few women willing to put in the work in college who want to participate in a sport and don't have the opportunity. I'd bet the man:woman ratio of people at D1 college who want to play a sport and are willing to do the work, yet don't have the opportunity is conservatively 25:1. This is the result of our devotion to abstractions like equality. Title IX should guarantee that any women who want to and are willing to compete at D1 have the opportunity, men should also be given that chance... that would be real equality. Instead of the absurd glorification of what is essentially a running club for half the women running D1 xc at the expense of resources that could go to men who actually wanted to work. All coupled with funding said "equality" by siphoning off the revenues generated by young men playing football/basketball at essentially a minor league level who rarely get anything resembling an education or a share of the profits they generate.

It's always men trying to hold back the women, just like they did with any distance longer than 800 meters in the Olympics until 1984.

It was not the men, but the women who finally overturned the hypocrisy of the men, to get the marathon in the Olympics in 1984!

High school girls only recently finally got the opportunity to compete at the 5k distance, the same as the boys!

But the old white men's club at NCAA still try to prevent women from running the same distance as the men. XC should not be a sprint event, just to make it easier for coaches who can't coach cross country runners. That should not be a factor at all. The only factor should be having the equal opportunity for women to compete, and that is not happening yet for NCAA cross country.

Let the women decide!

You men stay out of it, unless you're going to be supportive of women.

Sad but true wrote:

title ix sucks wrote:

Why can't women's sports stand on their own? Why shouldn't they? And why is having more guys play football a problem?

Because of selfish men who try to take everything away from women to try and boost their own weak egos as they don't like getting beat by the women.

As long as their are interested fans and participants, there will be women's sports. It is telling that you think women's sports would disappear without title IX because you are admitting there is ZERO real interest in them.

Men have never prevented women from playing sports on their own. The fact is women's sports couldn't survive on their own due lack of interest from fans and participants, so selfish women demanded that the men's sports subsidize them.

Let the women decide wrote:

But the old white men's club

Oh yeah, it's not just the men, it's the WHITE men!!!

Hi, Sheila Reid!

Yes, let the women decide, but I do not think many women would want to run 10k. I am a man and I didn't want to.

Should be they be allowed to? Sure, I have no problem with that.

Is it what most women would vote for? I severely doubt it.

i chose D2 wrote:

As anecdotal evidence, none of the 40+ female teammates I had ever complained about not getting to run 10k. I would estimate that nearly half of them complained about having to run an "extra" 1k at regional and nationals, compared to the 5k they ran the rest of the season.

It is stupid to run one distanve all season and then have to run longer at at the championships. Personally I think 8k for everyone is the way to go. Or maybe let them pick any distance between 7.0k and 9k that the course wants to use.

So in other words, there is no room for disagreement in your little, narrow world.

Hi Sheila.

asfdafdadsfadsdafs wrote:

It is stupid to run one distanve all season and then have to run longer at at the championships. Personally I think 8k for everyone is the way to go. Or maybe let them pick any distance between 7.0k and 9k that the course wants to use.

Discloser: I was a male 10K runner.

I like the fact that it moves up to 10K for nationals. The finish line for mid-packers like me (100-125 in DI) is crowded. I ran when they handed out popsicle sticks to the finishers rather than chip timed, but it is even more crowded now. This was never a problem during the regular season because you didn't have over 100 31:30-32:30 guys in the same race until nationals.

The national women's race was beyond crowded, an actual clusterfcuk. I could see lengthening that to 8K to spread the ladies out more, but being 5K or 6K regular season and conference meets because the talent is more spread out.

No. It's fine where it is.

The race should make 800/1500 runners hurt but not kill them (as 10k would) and shouldn't be a big advantage for the 18:00 5k plodders who are just out there without an ability to change pace.

These arguments about 800/1500 runners not being able to move up are all bullshit. At any distance, there are people better suited to it than others. Is it any less "fair" that a 10,000/marathon type girl is at a disadvantage at 6K than it is for a 800/1500 to be disadvantaged at 8K or 10K? I think not.

But that's not the point. At all.

The point is that cross is same distance for boy and girls in elementary school, middle school and the vast majority of high schools in the country (and those states where they still run different distances in HS will soon change). Then, suddenly, at the collegiate level, we decide that women can only run nearly half as far as the men. It's absurd.

Cross has ALWAYS favored the stronger long distance (10,000/marathon type) runners, but lots of mid-d runners have had success at it. Tim Hacker, Wottle, Steve Scott, and many others put up strong showings in cross and all credited it with helping them on the track.

I sat a listened to a HS coach rail about all the bad stuff that he predicted would happen when the high schools in his state were forced to move girls up to 5K from 4K by the threat of a Title IX complaint. After listening dutifully, I responded "There's just one problem with all of your arguments against it. NONE of those things have actually happened in the states that run 5K, have they?" He had to admit I was right.

It's the same thing here. All of this doom and gloom is either completely irrelevant or simply fictitious. Reminds of when women weren't allowed to race about 800 in the Olys because it would damage their reproductive organs.

What's fictional is that you think everything must be a result of sexist/misogyny/evil women hating patriarchy. If they ever decide to 10K I will not care one bit because it won't affect me. But they do not need to move to 10K for the false sense of equality. 6K is a perfectly valid distance with many advantages to it too and many women prefer it to 10K. There are many examples in sports where the men and women play by different rules and specifications, and no one cries sexism, because it isn't.

Zat0pek wrote:These arguments about 800/1500 runners not being able to move up are all bullshit. At any distance, there are people better suited to it than others. Is it any less "fair" that a 10,000/marathon type girl is at a disadvantage at 6K than it is for a 800/1500 to be disadvantaged at 8K or 10K? I think not.

Moving the distance for both men and women to 6k or 8k isn't a matter of being "fair" to 800/1500 runners. It's beneficial to a running program because if you've already got a track team running 800/1500/5000/10000 in the spring, if you run an intermediate distance like 6k or 8k for CC, then you have more runners to choose from for your CC team in the fall, and more of your athletes have a chance to run in the fall. Making it 10000m for either men or women cuts down on the talent available.

Move the men to 12k and cut women's xc.