Glorious mud
Cross-country runners do it differently
Mud, biting wind, unforgiving hills and a distinct lack of facilities make the National Cross Country Championships as far removed as you can imagine from the clean, corporate, running events that have become enormously popular in recent years.
There was no medal (unless you won) at yesterday’s race, no goody bag full of energy bars from sponsors and certainly no freebie commemorative T-shirt. The reward for getting around was a slap on the back from running club team-mates and hours scraping mud off your (cross-country) trainers.
But that did not stop more than 9,000 runners aged 12 to 77 from all over England paying their £8 entry fee to experience on
Hampstead Heath’s Parliament Hill what
Brendan Foster, a former winner, describes as the “true heart of running”.
Angela Duncan, at 77, was the oldest in the field. “I do wonder when I get there what am I doing here? It is cold and miserable, but once you get that first mud splash and feet wet it can be quite amusing,” she said.
Running is enjoying a massive boom and cross-country is more popular than ever, with a bigger field for yesterday’s championships than at any time since it was first held in 1876 with 32 runners. Yesterday’s field was nearly double that of 2015, when the championships were last held on Parliament Hill. It is a success story at a time of dwindling participation for other sports but it has also become the unlikely battleground for the latest debate on gender equality, one that led some runners to boycott this year’s event and cause a split between some of the biggest names in running.
The championships are the pinnacle of cross-country running in England. But cross-country remains the only running event where men and women compete over different distances. For the men, it was 12 kilometres yesterday, for the women eight. Some have had enough of what they view as a blatant example of everyday sexism, and their pressure forced the English Cross Country Association to hand out questionnaires to all runners asking if they would like to see distances equalised.
The campaign has been co-ordinated by Maud Hodson, who runs races herself from 60m to ultra marathons. We are members of the same club, East London Runners, and many opted out of competing yesterday in protest at the difference. What used to be an annual whinge from Maud at club meetings has turned into a national campaign, with a petition that has attracted nearly 2,500 signatures and led to a meeting next month with UK Athletics, the sport’s governing body.
At the top level, Jo Pavey has spoken out in support, Paula Radcliffe in defence of the current set-up. For Hodson, the campaign is not about her generation but for young girls and the message it sends about their importance within a major sport.
“The petition was such a good thing for getting the idea out there. It is like the MeToo thing. I realised it is not just me that doesn’t like it, there are people all over the country.
“It goes right back to early days when girls are not encouraged to challenge themselves physically in sport and if as soon as they start taking part in races they see boys are running further, it just reinforces the message that sport is a boys’ thing. You can run but not as much as them.
“When a sport reinforces ingrained sexism by presenting women and girls with watered down versions of the male events, then it is part of the problem, not the solution.
“Sport should be saying to girls and women, ‘Yes you can!’ not, ‘Well, yes, maybe, but not as much as the guys.’ I find it bizarre that in the 21st century we are even questioning if this is a good thing.”
The English Cross Country Association is staffed by volunteers and, yes, there is an air of oldfashioned amateurism. These are people who give up hours of their time to make events such as yesterday’s run smoothly. Without them, crosscountry would have vanished in fallow periods for the sport. But they are not used to being challenged and told they have to change. The ECCA did not want to comment and referred The Sunday Telegraph to a statement it put out last month.
Leadership, instead, will have to come from UK Athletics, and it is listening. Distances were equalised in Scotland two years ago and yesterday’s national championships in Edinburgh had their largest-ever field of female competitors. UK Athletics intends next year to equalise the distances for its own cross-country championship, the UK Cross Country Challenge, and it expects the ECCA to follow suit.
There are practical challenges. Lengthening distances means race meets will take longer, and crosscountry is held in the winter when daylight hours are fewer. Marshals will have to stay on the course longer, but no sport is as collegiate as running and the kind of people who volunteer as stewards want to cheer every runner home. The times at the elite end are about 10 per cent different between men and women, but there is little to choose between men and women at the back of the field. “UK Athletics will lead by example with our own events and we will have further discussions with ECCA and others about whether they recognise the time is right for them to recognise that change,” said Nigel Holl, UK Athletics’ director of strategy and partnerships, and chief executive of Scottish Athletics when it equalised distances. “We could get to a point where we insist on it.
“We work in partnership with organisations like the ECCA and I would like to do it with their agreement rather than anybody having to be told. I am fairly positive the right discussion, the right evidence from the questionnaire and what has happened in Scotland, and the right leadership from UK Athletics will get this in place.”
So, what do the runners think? “I don’t really want to go any further than I have to. Twice up that hill is a bit much,” says Angela Duncan, who has run eight marathons since her late 60s. “But I am old enough to remember when women were not allowed to do the marathon, the fact we can do that sort of thing is great.”
Foster was on Parliament Hill yesterday. He loves cross-country and believes it played a huge part in his own glittering running career, but he also sees the silliness of different distances. “I think it is an unnecessary controversy. Men and women run the same distances on the road. Crosscountry can be any distance and people should run whatever distance they want to run. But there is no slight in running the shorter distance.
“It is a political-correctness argument that does not have to be. The ECCA are right to put out a questionnaire. That is great. Women run 10k on the track, run marathon on the roads, so I think it is up to them. The days of women being moderated by the federations are long gone.”
‘Sport should be saying to girls and women, ‘Yes you can!’ not, ‘Well, yes, maybe, but not as much as the guys’’