2-time world xc champ Craig Virgin talks about XC.... And we listen.

We should be eager to listen to Craig Virgin, Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, Jim Ryun, and other legendary runners who are (hopefully) still alive. Yes, they made mistakes but hearing from them enables us to know-what-not-to-do! Which is just as important as knowing what to do. I always missed Indoor Track & Field so I have no problems with that! Craig Virgin has always treated me well, and I was no speedster!

The top college guys, who then went on to become pros, were already competing in track until at list mid-June (NCs) and often much later for the guys good enough to hop in a few pro meets and compete in the US track champs. Thus, by the time they became pros it really wasn’t much of an adjustment for the top guys. For world cross though you’re talking about competing four months later than the top college guys had ever experienced. Further, indoor track has been popular among high school and college athletes for decades so doing it as a pro isn’t an adjustment at all. Again, none of these guys are focused on cross country at all in March. There simply is not an established framework in the US like there is in Europe or Africa for world cross.

A runner's 400 pb is not always a good predictor of who wins in a kick at the end of a race. Murray Halberg had 53 second 400 speed and was able to run 53.9 on the last lap of the 1962 Commonwealth 3 mile in Perth on what Snell described as a very poor quality cinder track. Viren out kicked many faster runners in the 1976 5000m (Dixon's 1500 pb was 4 seconds faster than Viren's).

Just reporting from the Times article. I would never bet against Eamonn if he was in the mix with 400 to go.

Easy there. I know what and why. That race was only 2 months after Henry's 13:06, but there a reason why Eamonn was with him with 50 yards to go.

I met Craig in person a few years ago. He was totally cool, funny and humble. A true scholar and gentleman.

malmo was in that second race.

Eamonn was chairman of the boards.

You're one to talk...

Not one mention of his book "Virgin Territory" one of my favorite running books. Read this during a training session for motivation.

With all due respect to Virgin, the competition nowadays, particularly at the marathon, is much tougher than in his day. You're not going to find many top marathoners today running World Cross, then running a spring marathon -- there's too much money at stake. There wasn't as much money in the sport in the '80s.

Why do you think there's been such a huge drop off in interest internationally in this meet over the years? I've been looking at results from the 80s and early 90s and there were more than twice as many countries sending teams then as now. I know one explanation is that national federations don't want to pay to send teams that have no chance of winning or medaling now that East Africans are taking all the medals and top placings.

But in the years I've looked at there were full teams from Angola, Saudi Arabia, Iceland, Fiji, and other similar countries. None of those countries had any better chance of winning or placing high then than they have now.

I've seen the cost of sending teams as an issue. Obviously that isn't a factor for Saudi Arabia, maybe not for Iceland. But if Angola and Fifj could afford to send teams in the 80s and 90s it seems like they could manage to do so now. And I believe the only European countries to send teams to Tallahassee were Belgium, France, Britain, and Ireland. Surely most European countries could have afforded to send a team. Any theories?

The competition today is tougher than 10 years ago which is tougher than 10 years before that, which is tougher than 10 years before that, which is tougher than 10 years before that. Do you have a point, any point, at all?

You definitely need to dope to hang with todays crop of runners.

So Craig is saying people are babies now. Yup.

I think he made his point. Competition is different. The money is different. That's why some runners choose not to run. I didn't think it was that hard to understand.

You, and now FLINT, is why I said earlier that the whole '80s thing becomes tiresome. It's not because I diminish the achievements of that era. I grew up running in the '90s and early '00s trying to run like that. It's the attitude that a lot of the runners from that era have. It's a refusal to believe that today's runners at the top work just as hard.

I can appreciate all of the accomplishments of the era without the need to be stuck in it.

Since when have I said anything remotely like that? I haven't.

I agree, except when you had a 27 year old Casey Klinger at BYU racing against 18 year old freshman last season. I have a hard time justifying that. Otherwise, yeah, when competing internationally its a fact of life and no one cares how old you are.