Men's D1 XC Nationals may get moved from 10k to 8k

It is broke. Does anyone outside of our sport care about XC?

Longer is inherently harder is the attitude about running that has lead to the average person only asking "Have you run the boston marathon?" no one cares about how fast you run anymore.

So for all of you saying they are making it easier is just feeding the stereotype that longer is tougher. Running a fast mile is hard. An 8k can be just as hard as a 10k if the whole distance is raced, and the course is more challenging. 10k grass tracks are the stupid part.

NCAA swimming should have a Mile swim at D1 for men but only 1000m for women. At D3 men should go 1000m and women 800m. (you see the logic and comparison there)? What about rowing?

It takes longer to recover from a 10k race than a 800m race. That is just reality.

runfasta wrote:

It is broke. Does anyone outside of our sport care about XC?

Nope. It doesn't help our sport that only one meet matters.

I'm not a fan of moving from 10k to 8k. Why not have mid-season 10ks like there used to be a long time ago? I can remember running at least 1 if not 2 10ks before championship season, plus a few 8ks.

And, yes, as others have said, move regionals a week earlier. With teams racing so little why would it matter to move regional and conference meets? Conference, off, regionals, off, nationals. I think it's how D2 does it.

rojo why not just get rid of regionals entirely? Make everyone race a couple legit meets during the season, give teams 3 weeks after conference to prepare for nationals.

runfasta wrote:

It is broke. Does anyone outside of our sport care about XC?

How is it broke? Nature of our sport is that only a few competitions truly matter. Everything else is basically just prep and training for it.

YEAH! Let's save 5 minutes BABY!

This is hopefully not true. Just so stupid.

joalturn wrote:

dont be reedic wrote:

You are comparing apples and oranges. Men are (objectively) taller and bigger physically than women, which is the reason for hurdle and implement differences. There is no such reason for race distance.

Also, many people would like to see women move to the decathlon and that will happen soon probably.

Couldn’t you though? Why impose competition limits based upon physiological differences of some events but not others? Men are better equipped for long distance due to larger hearts and higher VO2 max on average. Yet women run marathons, 10k, 5k like men. So why not throw and jump with the same implements as men?

No, you couldn't. You're confusing the apple of physiology with orange of biomechanics/anthropometrics.

This is intended to aid programs with a middle distance focus, since 8k is easier than 10k for middle distance runners, but also, I would guess, a preparatory step to moving the women to 8k. On issues of gender equity, running the same distance is big. So, my bet is that while they did not want the women to be running 10k's, because it would take too long on the lower levels of D1, even at nationals, they could not make the direct decision in this day and age to put the women's race at a different distance than the men. They wanted to cut the men's race to prepare the way for women running 8k, which is what they really want above all, and then the men and women will run the same distances, as in track. The women should run at least 8k. No reason not to. I can understand not wanting to put them at 10k because of the added time, but they are more than capable of doing 10k if the men are doing it. Inconsistency of distance isn't a big deal because many programs don't run a lot of races prior to Regionals other than Pre-Nats and Conference champs, and while they were qualifying for a longer distance than they had run, that's no big deal. They could easily run a series of 10k's throughout the season.

I'd also like them to add the half marathon to the outdoor champs.

Although I think they should both run 10K, I'd be happy to see this proposal be quickly be amended to mandate all women's NCAA races are also at 8K, from the conference championships thru Nats. It is crazy that 6K remains the NCAA XC women's distance. It's truly insulting to female distance runners.

rojo wrote:

3. 8k might be more exciting only because the guys won't jog the start anymore. People may actually get out to get in position.

Well we got Mantz for 3 more years—the one who pushed last year‘s nats—and he’s the NL in the 10k atm. Looks promising to me.

Moving to 8K and abandoning the 10K? Stupid decision. What's next, moving to a 6K and eventually down to a 1 mile course on some flat grassy golf course because it may be too "hard"? To the NCAA people making these decisions--go suck your thumb and cry "waaah".

Obviously the NCAA decision makers never learned to do hard things--America was built by people who do hard things, not by making it easy.

Stupid decisions like this will adversely impact long distance running in the future--probably will impact future elite American marathon runners.