Gender Equity at XC Races
While on a FB this week (because yes I was wasting time on FB), I saw the CityTV news post on Gender Equity for Ontario XC Races, so I thought I would weigh in on the topic.
To start, it’s not Gender Equity, it’s Sex Equity (Gender is the socialized cultural term, Sex is the biological term to distinguish male and female – a debate we can leave until another day).
I come to elite running on a non-traditional pathway. I do not exactly follow the standard Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) model of a distance runner. But if you take a 30,000 foot approach versus a 10,000 foot approach my training mirrored a distance running LTAD program. I may not have always done run specific training but I was always building my speed and aerobic capacity between ultimate frisbee, cycling, and casual running, and strength with Alpine Skiing (nothing like 1000 squats/day at altitude).
You might think as a female that I would demand sex equity for the distances in cross-country. If I step back and think about it in terms of the greater good of the athlete here are some of the thoughts that I had.
Bringing the Girl’s Distance Up to Boy’s Distance
One of the fears I have with equalizing the races and bringing the girl’s distances up to the boy’s distance is the over-training and burnout. Already we see some girls doing a really high volume of training, running 100+ kilometres per week. Not only are these high volumes not sustainable for young women but the burnout factor from this type of training is quite high.
At these young ages it needs to be more about Deliberate Play instead of Deliberate Practice. Yes, there needs to be some specific training but it should have a high element of fun and games to it. I love seeing the girls that kick butt in running who play a lot of soccer, or really any other sport for that matter.
Bringing The Boy’s Distance Down to the Girl’s Distance
If you’re going to talk about one you have to debate the other. What if instead the boys raced the same distance as the girls? In terms of LTAD there are some benefits to these young gents. Like the girls with the longer distances there is a higher chance of over-training and burnout with the boys as well.
From a LTAD perspective it may make more sense to bring the distance down for these young gents. We all go through puberty at different times and for the guys who are delayed it can be tougher on their bodies to go to these longer distances.
A Compromise
Maybe the solution is a compromise. Canadian university cross-country increased the women’s distance from 5km to 6km in 2013 to match what the American Universities run. (For reference the current NCAA Div 1 distances are 6km for women and 10km for men).
What if instead of increasing the women’s to the men’s distances the women’s and men’s races found a compromise, somewhere between 7 and 8km? Another suggestion has been to do it based on time; for instance aiming for an approximately 25-30 min race for men and women and picking an appropriate distance for those times accordingly.
What’s left to debate
The jump from the OFSAA distance of 7k to the NCAA Div 1/CIS 10km can be quite challenging as well for the boys. And why with the girl’s OFSAA race at 5km is the boy’s race not closer to the university level distance?
But it really doesn’t make sense to make the girl’s race longer in high school than what they will run in university.
In the end I really care about the health and well-being of the athletes, men and women equally. I want to see the next generation of Canadian distance runners make their mark on the world scene. If we think about LTAD then increasing the girl’s distance is not in the best interest of the athletes. In addition, I think longer distances may drive more girls away.
There is no easy solution. Whatever solution is resolved it should be one to keep the athlete’s health and wellbeing centralized in the conversation, one that increases participation in sport (in an era where physical activity is decreasing), and one that is sustainable for years to come.
Good to hear this is generating discussion. I’m not convinced about the fear that increased distance will lead to over-training. Is there a greater instance of over-training in 5k-10k runners than in 1500m runners? I don’t know if there is but I think you have to have a clear answer to that question before you can assume that moving a girls distance from 5k to 7k would create problems like that.
Another issue with that fear is that it assumes that there is really that much difference in training for a high school athlete in moving from 5k to 7k. Over the course of xc season, runners (boys) move from 5k to 7k races fairly fluidly. I do not see why it would be that different for girls.
I think we have to look at where we are and ask: why? The answer to that is the traditional and unfounded assumption that women can’t handle as much as men can handle. So let’s just go back and design what we think would be the best progression in distance (it should be about the whole progression not just one high school division) for both sexes.
Sasha, would your views change if the OUA/CIS women’s distance were to be increased to more than the proposed OFSAA distance of 7k (say, 8k or up)?
And I’m curious as to why, after musing about a compromise of lowering boys’ distance a bit and increasing girls’, that you end up simply opposing an increase in girls distances, somehow in the interest of LTAD. You never say why 7k is ok for boys from an LTAD perspective yet not ok for girls, or offer any factual basis for expecting that participation rates will decrease for girls if their racing distance is increased.Could longer racing distances for girls be seen as supporting LTAD, given that senior athletes race 5k to marathon? How are Canadian girls supposed to discover their potential at the longer distances when the furthest they get to race in Canadian schools (right through university) is only 6k? (And note that while the NCAA races only 6k in XC, it offers the 5 and 10k on the track– and is consequently the source of a large number of senior elites at 10,000m and up globally).
Thanks Steve and John for the comments. Where to start…
In the end I did not mean to suggest the distance to go one way or another. I just wanted to weigh in on the discussion and provide some of my insights.
In the end logic said to me to oppose the increase in distance at the HS level given the distances at the University (CIS, NCAA) level. It didn’t make sense to me to run longer in HS then university. The chicken-egg/horse-cart argument would be valid; why not change it at the HS level and make the universities catch up.
Steve, I agree with you on the track, men/boys and women/girls should train exactly the same way for the events. What’s interesting in this conversation, which has not been discussed, is why at World Junior Track Championships the boys run the 5000m and 10000m and the run the 3000m and 5000m? Someone at the IAAF deemed that the girls were not ready to run the 10000m, mirroring what is happening in XC.
The increase in distance in losing girls comes from personal experience; while I don’t have any sound proof from a survey, I have found interacting with the young girls that increased distance would drive them away. Perhaps OFSAA could consider doing a survey over the next year or more and asking the girls what they want.
As a primarily track girl I don’t mind 6k vs 8k cross (as it is right now in Canada). You’re right that during this season it is just about building the aerobic capacity. One of the things I looked at in my ACD/Level 4 course was coaching to win versus coaching for LTAD. I think as coaches of young athletes we are sometimes blinded by results as opposed to skills; we sacrifice teaching skills to get the result on the field we are looking for. I should go back through my research and add some credibility to my article.
John, I actually disagree with you on your statement, “women can’t handle as much as men can handle.” As a woman I am not afraid to admit that men are stronger and faster. If you look at the track results all the boys events are faster than the girls. I suspect if you did a strength study that one would find that boys of a similar age are stronger than girls. To me this is directly proportional to what boys versus girls can handle.
I spend a lot of time advocating to keep young women in sport. From the organization’s I work with (Prissy Tomboy, Fast and Female, Sisu Girls) we know that there is a significant decrease in participation in sport with girls around the age of 13. Again, to my comment above I think we should survey the girls participating in the sport to see what they want. If we want to maintain or increase participation we need to ask those involved what they want as opposed to hypothesizing the distance the girls would prefer to run.
Here is why I think that women can absolutely handle whatever training a similarly trained guy can handle: Training load is based primarily on experience. The distance you are training for will determine what kind of training you do to an extent, but the load for that particular event is not determined by sex (nor by age exactly…more by training age), it’s determined by how much that particular individual has done to date and what progression is going to allow that person to improve. If the athlete is female then that will contribute some things to the equation: weight, strength, aerobic capacity can vary…but it can vary across individuals of the same sex as well!
Ask yourself this: do a 16:00 5k guy and a 16:00 5k girl train the same? I would say the answer is “maybe.” Only to the extent that their individual profiles would warrant it. But the answer isn’t “no, because one is a girl.” Do all 12-year-old girls training for 3k xc train the same? Maybe because at that age, you are working on physical literacy and very general stuff. But when you get to 15+, I’d say if the kids have enough of a background you start making individual choices. Those choices are still related to teaching them skills (and is there any more important skill in distance running than developing the ability to do lots of easy running?), not just at getting results. In any case, if you change the race distance, that impacts everyone, so it’s not really a matter of shooting for results (that’s going to happen no matter what with some young coaches).
ps I wouldn’t go to the IAAF for examples on what to do about sex equity; they are the ones that got us here in the first place.
Thanks, Sasha. Just one response: People are products of their social environments in many respects. I don’t imagine more than a tiny minority of women would have wanted to race longer than 800m when it was the longest distance on offer, had they been surveyed. Not even a majority of women wanted the VOTE in every jurisdiction when it a small minority of women were agitating for it. Universal suffrage was eventually granted anyway, on principle. The same should be the case in this instance. As with the extension of voting rights to women, and countless other gender equality measures, everyone will eventually wonder how it was ever otherwise.
Actually, two responses: Being stronger and faster has no bearing on what distance athletes can “handle”. Just ask any of us masters athletes, male and female, who still routinely compete over the same distances as everyone else, in spite of our significantly diminished speed and power. If you want to reason consistently on this issue, you’ll have to get to grips with the fact that gender/sex is not the only difference, or even necessarily the most significant one, between athletes (e.g. consider the implications of what you’re saying regarding disabled athletes).
Sasha, we have compromised. Here in the NCSSAA (Ottawa) we have bumped all the girls up 1K and the boys down 1K so (Midgets 4K, Juniors 5Kand Seniors 6K), with the hope that University equalizes the distances in the not too distant future (8k sounds about right). I think jumping all the way to 10K would be too big a change. It may get there at some point, but increasing race distance 67% overnight does seem a bit daunting.
I think that works well with the LTAD model. Our HS kids (regardless of age or ability) will not do any type of workout unless they can run continuous for 30 – 40 min, which for MOST athletes is more than enough time to cover their given race distance. I would say almost half my team (which this year hit 68) never does any structured workouts, other than our races and strides (often done paarlauf style) and most are involved in other sporting activities.