|
Jan 2018
9:21am, 10 Jan 2018
3,669 posts
|
larkim
For me personal preferences as to what men and women like feels irrelevant. It's about the organising bodies setting the lead and defining the nature of their championships.
XC does have an issue in that it's one size fits all, which is both part of its appeal and also a negative. I'm sure in many areas an XC champ over a 4k course would be different to that over a 10k course for example (though Bekele managed to win both).
Road races have mixed starts, so perhaps a compromise would be to hold a long and short course championship on the same day with runners electing to race one or the other and races run with mixed genders?
|
|
Jan 2018
9:22am, 10 Jan 2018
11,707 posts
|
Autumnleaves
That's not a bad idea at all.
|
|
Jan 2018
9:30am, 10 Jan 2018
3,670 posts
|
larkim
The only issue with it is that it confuses the "championship" status. At the minute there is one XC champ, undisputed. But with two different length races there'd be two champs. Arguably no different to having a world champ for 5000m and 10000m on the track etc, but still quite different to what we have today. And worthy of note is that the IAAF dropped the short track XC champs a few years ago, presumably because the short distance ended up being devalued when compared to the longer one!
|
|
Jan 2018
9:33am, 10 Jan 2018
1,235 posts
|
Uyuni
Surely organising bodies are there to reflect the wishes of those who participate in their sport
|
|
Jan 2018
9:41am, 10 Jan 2018
3,671 posts
|
larkim
Not sure about that Uyuni. I'm sure plenty of people would prefer marathons to be shorter (!) etc.
Coming from the top down, it doesn't make sense to me that the World Champ (male or female) would be running 10k, the English national champ would have raced 12k (M) or 8k (F) and the Southern Champ would have raced 15k (M) and 8k (F). If we accept that big regional champs are part of the hierarchy, surely they are serving their participants best by being consistent.
Being up north, it's never occured to me that XC champs would be 15k long, but it clearly is a subject that arouses passion amongst those who have raced it for years and years though, so if there was to be any change it would definitely create a non-silent opposition! I think if the Northern's harmonised at 10k I don't think there would be anywhere near as much noise, simply because the change would be smaller.
It's long struck me as anachronistic that male and female competitors are told from a young age that they should race different distances (e.g. U13 boys race 1500m in the Youth Development League whereas U13 girls race 1200m, same for 200m / 150m). There are good physiological reasons for hurdle heights to be different, or for throwing implements to have different weights. But distance seems to me to be something that is unarguably something that should just be the same for both genders.
|
|
Jan 2018
9:53am, 10 Jan 2018
1,236 posts
|
Uyuni
Yes but if the organising body makes a change because “it is the right thing to do” and half of the participants for whom the change was supposed to benefit decide that they don’t want it anymore and stop coming then it’s hardly a triumph is it!
In reality of course that wouldn’t happen but I can’t see why asking them first would be such a bad idea. I’ve only done the National twice but both times I would have been delighted to stop at 10K, and neither time did any of the women at our club express the desire to go round again!
|
|
Jan 2018
9:56am, 10 Jan 2018
3,219 posts
|
Curly45
I would rather not equalise as it stands.
Bear with me on why:
1. Having some races in Surrey that are 6k is EXCELLENT recruiting from parkrun - hey its only 1k more etc.
2. Marshaling wise getting people to stand out for 2 * 8k + 2 * junior races in our leagues is very hard. If we made that 2 * 10k then we are really struggling. It takes some of our runners 45 minutes to run 6k, 1hr to run 8k etc.
3. We dont have any 10k courses, and that means 3 laps (most 8k courses are 2 laps), that means lapping the slower runners on slippery/tight courses and rules out lots of locations we use, the men often end up at 2-3 courses but they have lower numbers than we do. We get more league course variety which I think is important.
Re: the current proposal is for women to run 15k at the Southern's They can f off. I am not doing that (and I love XC). 9 miles is a piss take and would decimate fields. It already puts lots of men off the Southerns at the mid-back of the field.
Now, I do see in future making the Nationals 10k, which would be fine as the courses take bigger fields anyway. Again that means women would run slightly further than in their leagues etc., but loads of leagues only do 6k so have to do that already (up to 8k).
|
|
Jan 2018
9:56am, 10 Jan 2018
3,672 posts
|
larkim
True, there'd be no point in diminishing the appeal of the sport or event. Though I think in reality that would just be a "blip" for perhaps one or two seasons where old stick in the muds decided to cut of their noses to spite their faces by not running "because it's shorter"!
|
|
Jan 2018
10:09am, 10 Jan 2018
1,237 posts
|
Uyuni
No way would I want to run 15k, and I'm not surprised that loads of blokes are put off by the prospect of it. I think that last year at the Midlands folks were expecting it to be 10k and they made them do another lap to make it up to 14 or something - lots of ashen faces at the club annual dinner that evening 
Agree that those different track distances are nonsense!
|
|
Jan 2018
10:18am, 10 Jan 2018
3,673 posts
|
larkim
Interesting perspective Curly.
Given I'm not a southerner, it doesn't affect me. But step one for me would be for the Southerns to at least come in line with the nationals and north / mids and race 12k max. It really does smack of old skool sticking with a distance which is so out of kilter with everything else.
In terms of the appeal etc, you're right that to a female parkrunner, 6k for example is only 1k up. But equally what about men? They seem to deal with the 5k up to 8k/10k/12k issue well enough?
Interesting too that you have fewer men running than women - its the opposite around us where the mens races in local leagues can be 2x the size of the women's field.
I'm sure its highly course dependent, but lapping rarely causes an issue (starts do - 400 piling into a narrow funnel!).
|
