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Age groupings in races
I know this doesn't apply to all races but a lot of the smaller and more clubby races split the age groups differently for men and women. For instance, V40 and V50 for men but V45 and V55 for women. Given that most women hit menopause around 50-52, this does seem illogical as you have post-menopausal women in their early 50s, who are dealing with poor sleep, hot flushes/night sweats and other symptoms, competing with pre-menopausal women in their mid-40s. Surely it would be more fair if both genders had the same age group categories.
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I don't think you can swing the pre-menopausal reason, for a lot of women there is no effect on their running performance at all.
I think it originally goes back to when they decided that women became vets at 35, but men at 40. So you could say that women are advantaged by having prizes at 35.
In the RunBritain rankings both sexes start for veterans at 35.
It's disconcerting enough counting as a vet for track and the masters relays going off 35 - let's not bring men's road stuff down from 40 please
I suppose there must be a "numbers" reason for the original 35 v 40 thing.
Our XC league scores men to women 50-50, but it's 6 in a team versus 4. So in effect women score higher. But because of numbers, they can't go 6 for women as that'd massively affect a lot of the teams without the numbers.
It wasn't until much, much later that the men's age was reduced to 35 to align with the female age group.
Things changed vastly with the mass participation events starting in the 80s and it is no doubt due to this that any of us who have so far posted on here are running at all rather than being officials, or not involved in the sport at all!
And I'm sorry Cal but that doesn't answer your question!
Basically the woman's start age should have moved up to V40 too, but somehow they made the illogical decision to lower the men's to V35.
Still not met any runner who has considered this a good idea. Money talks eh.
Do women and men still run different distances in XC champs? That never seemed right to me.
I think most County XC are V40, v50 , v60 for men, with V35,V45, v55 for women.
Frankly, as long as the rules and or prizes are defined, I don't see it as an issue.
Re different distances at championships, at the Nationals in 2018 at Parliament Hill, a survey was handed out to both Men and Women. Men voted in favour of equalizing distances more than the women did.
One argument is to shorten the Men's race from 12k to 10k, (or from 15k to 10k in the case of regional championships) and increase the women's from 8k to 10k.
To increase from 8k to 12 or 15k for women could impact the numbers taking part. Women's participation at the Nationals has grown by about 100% over the past 10 years (over 1000 finishers at Leeds this year, less than 550 at Parliament Hill in 2009).