I am currently a collegiate coach and I wholeheartedly endorse this change. The reason is quite simple. Until the 1990's there were always competitions during the regular season at 10K, so athletes got a taste of that distance. Then the regular season 10K's dried up. So if we are going to race over 8k all regular season it doesn't make sense to me to then suddenly change at the end of the season to 10k's. This is would the same as collegiate basketball playing four quarters all season long, then changing to 5 quarters during the NCAA tournament. So I'm for this but also for the women to move to 8000. It is time for both genders to race the same.