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I hated my first indoor track season. Going from running amidst mud, rain, hills — even snow—and the always gorgeous grassy courses of cross country to a 200m track in a hot, stale building was jarring, to say the least. As someone who had run cross country since the age of 12 but opted to do marathons during the traditional spring track season, I was discombobulated by the concept of running on a tiny loop. I found myself missing everything about cross country. Well … almost everything.
Distance events in indoor track and outdoor are the same for both men and women. There are men’s and women’s heats, but everyone runs the same distance. In cross country, men and women run on the same terrain, at the same location, but for different distances.
Men’s cross country was introduced as an NCAA sport in 1938. They had various championship race lengths until 1976, when they settled on 10 kilometers. Women’s cross country was not introduced until 43 years later, in 1981. Instead of allowing women to run 10k like the men, the NCAA thought it appropriate to make women’s courses half the length.
Today, DI and DII men still run 10k. In DIII, men run 8k. In all three divisions, women run 6k. DIII men run over a mile more than the women, and DI/DII men run nearly two and a half miles more than their female counterparts.
In this decade, having different length races based on gender is not a common practice in high school, middle school or professional running settings like the Olympics and the World Cross Country Championships. The almighty National College Athletic Association, however, still believes that this blatant display of sexism is not problematic.
In the decades when these distances were initially established, there were many widespread myths about women in distance running: a woman couldn’t run more than 800m or she wouldn’t be able to have kids; women were physically incapable of competing in distance events such as the marathon; it was all too much for their frail bodies. These myths have been disproved for quite some time, but the NCAA continues to uphold policies based on them. Ragean Hill, Chair of the Executive Associate Athletic Director on the NCAA’s Committee on Women’s Athletics, said that the committee would have to “consider engaging with the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports about whether adjusting the race distances would raise any health and safety concern for women student athletes,” before any distance change could be proposed.
And really, it just makes no sense. The 10k is a distance race for both men and women in outdoor track, and the NCAA has found no issues with women racing that distance. In fact, the 10k — twenty-five laps of an outdoor 400m track — is my main event. I competed this distance at outdoor track championships and then had to start summer training for a 6k cross country race again. As a competitor on a women’s team, did I suddenly lose all my endurance capabilities between Spring Term and the following Fall Term? Did I suddenly become frail and weak? No, I continued to run 65 miles a week and continued to make progress during my speed workouts.
There have been several campaigns proposing that cross country races for all genders be changed to an 8k distance, but none have gained traction. This proposal would not only encourage equality in the sport but save the countless hours and dollars that are needed to mark out two separate courses. It is not only the right choice, but the logical one. Apparently, that isn’t enough, so next cross country season I will stand on the starting line of a 6k course — a powerful reminder that my contributions to college sports will never be as important to its governing body as the contributions of my male teammates.