Introducing the season long FloXC fantasy league. A chance for you to compete against the FloTrack staff and be in the running to win a FloPRO subscription for a year!

There was a point in the summer when the Oregon women’s cross country team appeared to be on shaky ground. When the 2018 cross country roster was released in August, it lacked Katie Rainsberger and Lilli Burdon—two All-Americans at the core of a Ducks squad primed for another top-five finish at the national championships. 

It was a relatively quiet week in the NCAA cross country scene, as most teams rested while looking forward to a busy weekend to come. A majority of the top squads in DII and DIII raced the previous weekend, so a softer slate of meets was to be expected.

As we head into the last week of September, let's take a look at the top freshmen and redshirt freshmen in the nation who have made their NCAA XC debuts.

If any team has a shot to dethrone the two-time defending NCAA champions, the Northern Arizona men, at nationals this November, it’s No. 2-ranked BYU. 

Last week, we dug into the last 20 years of the men's results from the NCAA Cross Country Championships to identify some commonalities among the championship teams. The analysis didn’t yield definitive rules to win a title, but it did provide some guidelines.

The standard for individual excellence in NCAA cross country is quite clear: finish in the top 40 at nationals. By doing so, an athlete earns All-American status, a title that carries significant weight on a distance runner’s résumé.

The World Anti-Doping Agency removed the ban on Russia’s anti-doping agency on Thursday, setting off a wave of criticism in the athletic community. The ban was enacted in 2015 after reports of widespread state-sponsored doping.

Jordan Hasay of the Nike Oregon Project has dropped out of October’s Chicago Marathon, her second withdrawal from a major marathon in five months, and once again due to a calcaneal stress fracture in the heel of her left foot.

Jason and Kevin discuss Eliud Kipchoge’s destruction of the marathon world record, how his career will be viewed in the future, the next race he will run and the prospect of a sub-two-hour marathon.