Equality vs quality, innovation vs tradition, and everyone vs pacing lights: Cross Country and distance running with Paula Radcliffe

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Earlier this year, UKA announced that they were going to consult clubs, athletes, and competition organisers about cross country race distances. A host of GB runners, including three-time World Champion over the cross - Paula Radcliffe - penned a response, arguing against equal distances for men and women. As could only have been expected, Twitter immediately became the sort of rocky, perilous landscape only previously seen in Aarhus in 2019.

Why the furore? Should gender parity, something we love about athletics, extend to XC race distances? Women *can* run as far as men, but should they? With Paula’s near-peerless expertise and passion, we debate all of this in the latest Backstraight pod - before talking through some other distance goodies (or baddies, in some cases): pacing lights, shoe technology innovations, and how Mo Farah’s return to track is going.

This is a contentious one, and we’d love your thoughts, so please - as ever - get in touch on Twitter (@BackstraightB and @Claire_GThomas), or on Instagram (@BackstraightBoysPodcast).

Thanks, as ever, to Mark Shearman MBE - @athleticsimages - for the photographs in our show artwork.

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