Where is the 6k distance come from?

6k makes it a little longer than high school xc, but not so long that it takes all day for the slower runners to finish.

I think 2k loops are fairly common in championship courses. All the international championships distances tend to multiples of 2K.

Good point. Everyone knows they only die when they go beyond a half marathon.

Junior women run 6k at World Cross country and the junior men 8k. To be honest the college women should be doing 8k at Nationals. It's time the NCAA got on with the times.

I rather wonder why the US are not racing 4 miles (and 6 miles for men). World Xcountry has the junior women's race apparently only since 1989 and they ran 4-4.5 km before the late 1990s when they changed it to 6 km. So I doubt that NCAA was following Worlds, as NCAA has a much longer tradition.

I think they should all do 8k

Interesting hypothesis! The gap between first and last today on the womens side was 3:45. For the men it was 4:07. The gap between first and second to last woman was 3:19, and for the men was 4:02.

So we are definitely waiting longer for the men now. So back in the day when the 6th and 7th women weren't as competitive as they are now, this rationale might have made some sense. But now the distance probably needs to be increased to 8k in the womens race so we aren't waiting longer for the men. But if we are increasing it to 8k, why not just go all the way up to 10?