When will Women's NCAA DI Cross-Country move up to 8K/10K?

Hardloper wrote:

this and this wrote:

Most high schools now run both males and females over 5k xc. Its just as big a jump from 5k to 10k for male now as it would be for females. The men can handle the jump, and so can the women.

The top HS males are running a lot higher mileage though.

Not if you have a coach that's not terrible?

I was lucky as my high school coach was a former international-level track guy, so we were trained and brought along properly. In my last year of high school I was running 70-85k per week, plus doing some other seasonal sports. Maybe one or two of the boys on the team ran a bit more than I did, but they weren't doing other sports at a high level. This is keeping in mind that where I lived, the girls' XC distance was always 2k shorter than the boys (5k vs 7k for seniors) too. In university I progressed to running 120-140k per week in my final year (all for a mere 6k XC race!), which was more than many of the men on my team (racing 10k XC!).

If you're training properly for any standard distance event over 1500 but less than a half marathon, the difference in mileage should be negligible (ie. as much as you are able to at that time, within reason). Coaches of girls/women often make excuses about how they "can't handle the mileage," but a lot of this is either a straight up medical problem (they shouldn't be training hard in the first place!) or a self-fulfilling prophecy (if you're low mileage, you're gonna have to run relatively faster at all times to get fit... which increases your injury risk).

Where is the female outrage on this inequality? Why aren't the female runners themselves who would be affected by this as well as all the feminist organizations in this country marching in the streets about this? Women seem to want equality most of the time, but I just don't see the outrage on this. Aren't women's college scholarships worth just as much as men's? Shouldn't women do just as much work to earn those scholarships as the men. If women are only doing 6/10 as much work as men, shouldn't they get 6/10 as much scholarship as men? On a related note, why does Serene Williams demand equal pay for winning a grand slam, but she sure isn't advocating for changing the women's matches from best 2/3 to best 3/5.

Is there an equivalent to Title 9 in Canada? On my college team, typical mileage was 70-100 for men and like 40-70 for women. While many guys got cut, there were inevitably some women on the team running 25 mpw with little motivation to compete, but were guaranteed a spot on the team anyway. Both teams were equally competitive nationally, so this seems to be the norm nationwide.

UltraDude wrote:

Where is the female outrage on this inequality? Why aren't the female runners themselves who would be affected by this as well as all the feminist organizations in this country marching in the streets about this? Women seem to want equality most of the time, but I just don't see the outrage on this. Aren't women's college scholarships worth just as much as men's? Shouldn't women do just as much work to earn those scholarships as the men. If women are only doing 6/10 as much work as men, shouldn't they get 6/10 as much scholarship as men? On a related note, why does Serene Williams demand equal pay for winning a grand slam, but she sure isn't advocating for changing the women's matches from best 2/3 to best 3/5.

Moran.

Jruns wrote:

THE QUESTION IS why can't men move down to 6ks

Agreed.

But what about this folks .....

Let whichever school is hosting the national meet make their course whatever distance they want to!

There is no reason on Earth that cross country courses should all be the exact same distance. No cross country course is exactly like the other in geography, surface, curvature, etc, so comparable running times are irrelevant.

I would propose that the governing bodies set a long/short parameter for an acceptable distance, say no course shorter than 6k nor longer than 12k. Any distance in between is acceptable, even if it's some oddball distance like 7.36k or 9.82k.

One great thing about doing it this way would be to eliminate those stupid subloops you often find in cross country courses, the sole purpose of which seems to be to make the course a standard distance.

I know this goes beyond the OP's inquiry, but hopefully will shed more light on the absurdity of exacting race lengths for a sport that's supposed to be about running in a natural setting.

I support this message. Cross should be about pure racing.

I kinda like it. :(

This topic was wrote on in detail not that long ago...

The discussion has interesting roots. The only reason women run 6K instead of 5K at the NCAA level is because the USATF/IAAF standards for juniors rose from 5K-6K in the mid '90s. Even with 18-under girls running 6K and NCAA female athletes running 5K there was still a ton of hostility to change it.

Read more here:

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

I believe that most woman don't want to change to a 10k. I say this knowing that they can handle it.

In 20-30 years

A few thoughts:

1.) I'm not sure why there is concern about women making the jump to 8k/10k when they run 10k on the track just fine.

2.) I also do not think they would be less competitive if the race is longer. Just because runners are more spread out in the results does not mean it was less competitive.

3.) I think everyone running 8k is a great solution, and not moving it up for regionals and nationals either. I think only moving it up 2-3k for the women would not drastically change much of how training or recruiting goes.

4.) I also really like the idea of letting whoever is hosting the meet choose however long they want to make the race (5k/6k minimum, 10k/12k/ maximum) Making CC all about pure racing and not about times at all would be fantastic. I do see a couple issues:

-First, I think there should be some sort of consistency when it comes to regionals and nationals. But as far as regular season goes, any distance in the range should be fair game. Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't Chili Pepper do a 10k, and Notre Dame do "5 miles" (which I know is essentially a 8k)?

-Second issue is that I am not sure the 10k/12k races would be all that popular with coaches during the regular season.

5.) Get rid of the indoor 5k. Glad people are on board with that.

6.) I honestly did not know some states still have girls running less than boys in CC. Thought everyone was 5k/3 mile.

It's a fun idea, but 6k and 12k are far enough apart that the training for them is noticeably different. Better to have one distance that coaches and athletes can prepare for deliberately and consistently.

one year let everyone run 6k(women and men), next year 8k and back to 6k and so on. get some variety in. spice it up

As a current NCAA collegiate coach, and former NCAA committee member the reason that the women moved from 5000 meters to 6000 meters had nothing to do with running. The NCAA was having significant issues at the finish line with women running the 5000, and there was huge pile ups at the finish line, and difficulty in getting women off the finish line. So the NCAA decided if they extended the distance to 6000 meters, the women would be spread out more, and make it easier at the finish line. So the change had nothing to do with women running longer because they are fully capable, it was a meet management issue. And then the coaches voted on the issue they actually voted not to move up to 6000 meters (48%-52%) but the NCAA ignored that and made the change. And several times the proposal of running a "short" course and "long" course at the NCAA Championship was brought to the NCAA committee, but it just never gained any traction. The idea of moving women up to the 8000 meters has been discussed, but again, it takes a huge push by the coaches association for things like that to move forward.

Running On Empathy wrote:

I would propose that the governing bodies set a long/short parameter for an acceptable distance, say no course shorter than 6k nor longer than 12k. Any distance in between is acceptable, even if it's some oddball distance like 7.36k or 9.82k.

You can already race whatever distance you want during the regular season (as mentioned above).

I don't see it happening any time soon

If you run 10k for NCAAs, you should run 10k for regional qualifying. Fact is, women's XC has a lot less depth than men's and the back-of-the-packers will take a loooong time to finish 10k at D1 regionals. Same as if you ran 10k for boys in HS, the top runners could handle it just fine but the slower runners would really struggle and it wouldn't be fun for them or the fans.