John Lofranco weighs in on cross-country gender equity debate

John Lofranco is an endurance group leader for the Quebec Athletics Federation. He is an IAAF Level 5 Elite Coach and a graduate of the National Sport Institute. A chartered professional coach under Coach Canada, he’s also an evaluator and learning facilitator in the National Coaching Certification Program. The following views are his own and written as a rebuttal to elite runner Sasha Gollish’s letter on the gender equity debate. 

I would like to thank Ms. Gollish for engaging in this discussion in a civil and thoughtful way. I’ve been an advocate for equal cross-country distances for male and female races for several years, not only in university cross-country, but on all levels. The tone of this discussion has been at times quite fraught, and unfortunately, at times more emotional than rational.

In Quebec, we’ve now equalized the male and female cross-country distances up to the age of 15, having both run 4K in club and school circuits. The goal is to continue to raise the women’s distance over time to eventually match the men’s distance. We welcome the steps the USports and CCAA coaches associations have taken in recent years to increase their women’s distances.

I agree with much that Ms. Gollish has written: when it comes to such a change, sport leaders should think holistically, consider development and look at the research. The most recent development on this story is the decision to increase the women’s CIS cross-country distance in 2017 to eventually equalize it. I would like to analyse this decision through the points which Ms. Gollish raises.

Firstly, it’s true that student-athletes are busy people. Ms. Gollish accurately portrays the challenges they race. However, these challenges are no different for men versus women. The recovery research she cites relates to resistance training. It would be a stretch to assume the same applies to aerobic stresses– of which cross-country training mainly consists. The study also monitored untrained volunteers. The experienced student-athlete is an entirely different animal. Right now, there’s no evidence that men and women (student-athletes or otherwise) should treat recovery differently.

The second issue that Ms. Gollish raises is based on overall training load. This is an important consideration. The thing to recognize here though, is that modern training methods suggest that the load isn’t determined primarily by the event, but by the individual’s capacity. Put simply, the total volume and intensity of training that one should do for a 6K, 8K or 10K, is primarily determined by how much that individual can handle, not by the race distance itself. It is an out-dated notion that one distance requires a certain number of miles. 

In fact, training for distance from 5K to 10K are essentially the same. The contribution of the aerobic metabolism to the 5K is 88 per cent (according to Dr. PB Gastin’s updated Accumulated Oxygen Deficit Model) while for the 10K, it’s 90. By contrast, the aerobic contribution in the marathon is around 97 per cent and in the 1500m it’s 84. (The previous model, put forth by Jess Jarver, suggested the 5K had an aerobic contribution of only 80 per cent, and the 1500m of 52.5 which is likely why some people think of them as requiring less mileage).

The point is that the training load for anything in the six to 10K range isn’t different. To illustrate this, several of our club athletes competed over 6K last weekend, and did quite well. They’ll also compete over 10K in two weeks. One of them runs over 100K per week, another runs closer to 40K with cross-training. Both are capable of racing distances from 1,500m to 10K. The training plan is catered to each individual, not the race distance.

Third, the idea of polling the athletes is flawed. Status quo bias would weigh heavily in any poll. While athlete input is important, any tendency to want to race longer or shorter (by men or women) is likely to be dictated by that individual’s preference, as a middle-distance or long-distance specialist. This demographic is also likely to biased as there are more middle-distance specialists. The current university sport system (especially on the women’s side) favours this type of runner, with the longest race distance being 6K in cross-country and 3,000m on the indoor track. Asking the athletes just won’t be definitive.

Finally, Ms. Gollish raises the question of speed versus aerobic development. The mention of developing speed in the Canadian Sport for Life documents refers to early and mid-adolescence, where the recommendation is for athletes not to specialize, but to do many different events. If an athlete was to listen to that recommendation, cross-country would fulfill the aerobic component and then, they could choose work on their speed at other times of the year. It’s also possible, and advisable, to “train to train” and focus on speed development, but still race cross-country to get the competitive experience. The cross-country distances for these athletes are 3K to 4K. But this all occurs well before university, so it’s not a relevant point.

In this discussion, there has also been the argument that university cross-country is somehow about participation numbers. This, I would argue, is almost dangerous thinking. The USports strategy is part of the high-performance sport pathway, as Ms. Gollish herself points out. The goal behind setting the race distances shouldn’t be to open up the sport to as many as possible, but to develop athletes as appropriately as possible.

Given all of the above, it seems fairly easy to decide that men and women should run the same distance in university cross-country (and at other levels too). As to what that distance should be, given that Athletics Canada has set the senior distances at 10K, and that most high school distances are around 5K to 7K, I think 8K would be an appropriate distance. While the training for that would be similar as it is for 6K, I would argue that if an athlete wants to race a half-marathon or marathon later on, racing experience at longer events will be essential.

One final note here is that, yes, I am a man, presumably telling women which distances they should run. I recognize this. I’m not trying to “man-splain” anything to anyone. My role here as a leader in the sport. My experiences have led me to think about these issues. I coach women, I’ve listened to what they have had to say, and I’ve compared that to my own experiences– both as an athlete and as a coach and administrator.

When cross-country distances for women were originally set, it’s unclear that any real evidence supported the decision to have women race less than men. Women have always raced with the stigma of being less physically able than men. This was ingrained from the get-go and continued even as fears of physical damage were shattered by the performances of highly capable women first in, middle distance events and then in the marathon and beyond. Cross-country remains the sole bastion of this old school thinking: all track and road running events offer the same distances for men and women. It’s time to close that final loop. Barring large-scale social change, the next generation of runners will still face the systemic discrimination that women face in society in general. But at least we could say that within the confines of our sport, we give them equal opportunity.