Trick question! Shouldn’t we be asking ourselves instead why our best American distance runners aren’t trying to copy the athletes that routinely beat them in hopes of leveling up? The notion that racing on grass matters less or that late autumn is a fallow racing time for tracksters is a decidedly U.S.-centric one. The 2024 World XC champs – Chebet and Joshua Cheptegei – both ended up with Olympic 10,000m titles later in the summer, and the two silver medalists in the event are following their lead. Berihu Aregawi finished second in Seville, and Nadia Battocletti’s first race since August was a 6.2km XC race last Sunday in her home country.

But wait – what about the speed-based 5k runners? Surely world junior record holder in the 1500m Ronald Kwemoi, the silver medalist behind Jakob in Paris, never races on grass! Wrong again: while Kwemoi hasn’t raced since the Brussels Diamond League this year, he competed in three XC races in two weeks between October 29 and November 12 last fall. On the women’s side, Faith Kipyegon may be a small exception to the rule, but her last cross country race came a lot more recently than you might think – she won the Sirikwa Cross Country Classic in Eldoret, Kenya in February 2023.

Grant Fisher, on the other hand, hasn’t raced on dirt since his last collegiate XC race, the 2018 NCAA championships. Which is pretty weird considering he’s a two-time Foot Locker champ and there have been five pro-level national cross country championships since then. But this isn’t a Grant Fisher callout piece – he’s the norm, not the exception, when it comes to Team USA’s approach to the fall season. On the other hand, kudos to Olympic 1500m champ Cole Hocker, who probably had to swallow a little bit of pride en route to a 12th-place finish at this year’s USATF XC Championships, but hey – he showed up, got a hard effort in, and hopefully learned something.

Some of it has to be circumstantial. Frustratingly, the U.S. XC champs are consistently in the middle of winter, often directly conflicting with notable indoor track races. So that’s one problem. The other is that the bulk of quality cross country races for pros do take place in Europe, and it’s understandable that a West Coast resident who just spent three months in a series of non-air-conditioned hotel rooms bouncing between track meets eight time zones away from home might not be eager to go back.

But if every mid-tier podium chaser on the U.S. distance running scene is willing to try bicarbonate and double thresholds because they watched the right YouTube video, why not give fall cross country a[nother] shot? For those of us who don’t give a shit about football, cross country is the quintessential fall sport in America. The crunch of leaves underfoot and the specific odor of mud-caked spikes left in their bag overnight dredge up nostalgia for all the good times when time didn’t matter. And since Americans haven’t won Olympic 5000m or 10,000m gold in 60 years, it might be worth considering that following the champions’ footsteps to greener pastures is the secret to success that’s been hiding in plain sight.

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