It's been about a month since our last update, and we're still seeing new faces pop up in the ranks.
Manhattan, Great American, Clovis and Nike Twilight have all come and gone. Mt. SAC is this weekend, and then it's back home for most individuals as they head into the championship season qualifying process.
We have 14 athletes in our top 25 who remain undefeated, but by the end of the season, there can be only one.
Here's how things are shaping up halfway through the season.
Rankings Criteria
Unlike the team rankings, the individual rankings can be harder to pin down. While Nike Cross Nationals is the ultimate target, individuals also have Brooks and RunningLane as options - and all three courses are vastly different.
Our rankings are not predictions for a specific national meet, because every runner has distinct strengths and weaknesses. A muddy, cold course in Portland is far different from a dry, hilly course in San Diego - and different still from the fast, flat track of RunningLane. If I were predicting the outcomes of each, my lists would look different every time.
We try to remove those variables - the perils of 24 hours of travel for half the field, the time changes, the disrupted routines, the diet adjustments. What if a perfect world existed where every athlete competed on equal footing, with the same advantages and disadvantages?
Of course, that can never truly happen. So we do the best we can and will continue to tweak our predictions for each individual championship accordingly.