Lol well the rest of my teammates hated switching to the 6k as well and struggled with the switch. Guess we were all dumb. When your body is used to kicking at a certain point and you’ve been doing it 7+ years, your body and mind go through some denial as to when to start kicking, which is clearly later in the race, so you need to run your race actually a little slower, which is a mind f@&k. Especially when we only did it 2x total, a month apart with 5ks before and in between.
Gotta add that I could race a 6k just fine, but I hated it. I ended up trying to pretend it was a 5k and the last 1k sucked badly the two times I did it. Hence the lack of kick I usually had.
And for the record, even though I was a 10,000m runner, I got thrown into the 800m one time in college and actually did fairly well.
As for switching to the 8k or 10k for XC? You are right, I could’ve handled it just fine because the longer the better for me, but our team would’ve suffered. The 10,000m is the least popular race amongst women wanting to participate in... I don’t think that would bode well for switching XC to 8k/10k for women. Whoever posted earlier on here that it would change recruiting is right.
My vote is stick to the 6k. And I think I may be the only woman that’s posted so far on this thread, and it was insinuated I was dumb so good-luck getting anymore women to give their opinion.
Pushing your limits constantly fills you with adrenaline, as a woman, but it's also walking on thin ice. I ru 3 times a week with SportMe Marathon Trainer and monitoring my progress made me a less anxious and more self confident person. It's amazing what running can do for you!