2019 IAAF world cross country OPEN TO ANYONE TO COMPETE IN!

Hey Rojo, so what's the story with this? Do you get to race with the big guns or is it some festival events like the children's 2km run at the local city marathon? Did they actually bring back the short course 4km race?

rojo wrote:

To participate in The Search, the following admission conditions apply:

• MEN: Within the last 12 months, you must have run an official 10K race in less than 33 minutes

Damn really? I just tempo'd a local 10k in 34 flat. I bet I could go put on some lighter shoes and join a decent race and get that easily.

rojo wrote:

Also they aer only accepting 200 people so they are drawing straws amongst the qualified.

Ah RIP :(

Nobody cares about distance running, so might as well let everyone compete.

You can already be in the USATF XC champs, at least until recently, with no entry standard. So why not worlds for a B-skinny 33 guy.

Subway Surfers wrote:

Hey Rojo, so what's the story with this? Do you get to race with the big guns or is it some festival events like the children's 2km run at the local city marathon? Did they actually bring back the short course 4km race?

Yes, you get to race them. Here's an issue. If I was a manager of an up and coming Kenyan who didn't make the team, I'd enter them for exposure but it would look bad for optics when Random Kenyan entrant finishes 20th overall.

Maybe we should sponsor a team letsrun. The only issue is can we win the lottery for one of the 200 spots.

Up here in Canada, for our XC national championships, there is an open community race separate from the youth, junior, senior and masters races. It costs much less to enter, but the field is often quite good. It is a mix of people trying XC for the first time to fairly strong runners just not ready for the big races.

I think it's quite a good idea, it attracts a bigger crowd and gets people out that may not normally go watch a running event, creating new fans, and new runners.

While i'm not on board with letting anyone run with the people who qualified, I think an open race at World XC would be huge! Who wouldn't want to run the same course as the elites do.

milermb wrote:

For once there is something positive to say about the IAAF! They are at least trying to revive interest in what has become a fading event. For the event to recapture its past glories they need all countries to take it seriously and send the strongest possible team. If it continues to be a Kenya vs Ethiopia struggle with a few other Africans thrown in the rest of the world will continue to become less and less interested - which would be very sad indeed.

Going to be interesting when they get to the pulling off because I have been to WXC and there will be runners from teams that get lapped. Will the iAAF let them go and pull off the others or does anyone who get slapped get yanked

rojo wrote:

Ok, I went to the website. There are time restrictions for the elite race.

To participate in The Search, the following admission conditions apply:

• MEN: Within the last 12 months, you must have run an official 10K race in less than 33 minutes

• WOMEN: Within the last 12 months, you must have run an official 10K race in less than 37 minutes

• If you do not manage your cut-off times, you will be taken out of the race. For men, the cut-off time is 4.00 minutes, while for women it is set at 4.30 minutes.

What the hell does a cut-off time of 4 minutes mean?

I think they need to update the page. They need to say if you are going to be lapped, we also will pull you off the course.

Also they aer only accepting 200 people so they are drawing straws amongst the qualified.

I'm guessing they'll time 4 mins after the first person finishes their lap, so if the leader goes thru 6k in 17:30, you have until 21:30 to run 6k.

milermb wrote:

For once there is something positive to say about the IAAF! They are at least trying to revive interest in what has become a fading event. For the event to recapture its past glories they need all countries to take it seriously and send the strongest possible team. If it continues to be a Kenya vs Ethiopia struggle with a few other Africans thrown in the rest of the world will continue to become less and less interested - which would be very sad indeed.

XC is no more dominated by Kenya and Ethiopia than sprinting is dominated by USA and Jamaica but no-one has suggested scrapping sprints or only having the 100m every other championship?

Maybe once East Africans have reached the same worldwide distribution that West Africans have we can go back to the way xc used to be.