I conclude that you don't know what you're talking about. The top girl this year so far has run about 16:00 so far. It's been about the same for the previous years (Cuffe, Hasay, etc).
Being half a mile behind is not pretty good to me. It is ok. Also, how good someone is shouldn't be dependent on where they are ranked. Otherwise, in a down year, a 20:00 5k could be considered pretty good. I'm fairly certain that you don't think 20:00 is pretty good. My idea of pretty good is how close they are to the record or to that year's sole best runner.[/quote]
Seriously dude? Lets extend this argument a little further just so we can all completely understand your point of view. So, I quickly brought up the results to the 2011 NCAA DI XC Champs. I went down through the results and found the woman who finished "nearly a half a mile" behind the winner of the race, finishing in 181st place out of 254. She was the number 6 runner for the 22nd best female DI team last year. Her PR in the 5k is 16:58 and 10k is 34:47. Just being at DI nats puts her above most NCAA DI, DII, and DIII runners. Add to that her times in the 5k and 10k on the track and she is better than a very high percentage of NCAA runners. This doesn't even account for all the people that have tried, but are not good enough to make an NCAA team, and the other college divisions.
This caliber runner is really just "ok" in your mind? Not even "pretty good"?