7 storylines to keep an eye on at DI XC championships

Cross country meets can fly by in the blink of an eye, no matter how much running you watch during the season. It takes some prep to make sure you don't miss a race's most interesting stories.

Let us get you caught up to speed so, come the sound of the gun, you can enjoy yourself and be the smartest XC viewer possible. Here's what we're watching this weekend in championship action:

RELATED: 2017 Division I Men's and Women's Cross Country Championship Qualifiers

Update: With careful consideration to the well-being and safety of student-athletes, coaches and fans due to the impending weather, the NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Cross Country Committee has decided to start each of the championship races one hour and 45 minutes earlier tomorrow morning. The 2017 NCAA Division I competitions, being held at E.P. Tom Sawyer Park in Louisville, Ky., will begin with the women’s race at 9 a.m. Eastern time, followed by the men’s race at 10 a.m. Eastern time. The awards presentations for both championships will be held on site shortly after the completion of the men’s race.

4 things to watch in the women’s race

1.) Ednah Kurgat could run a perfect season

New Mexico’s Ednah Kurgat has been staggeringly good this year. She didn’t appear in the Lobos’ season-opening invitational, but ran in their next four events and won all four races, including a decisive victory at the Mountain Regional on Nov. 10, en route to being named the NCAA Division I Mountain Region Women’s Athlete of the Year.

Winner of four meets in four tries this season, New Mexico women’s cross country runner Ednah Kurgat was named USTFCCCA Mountain Region Athlete of the Year today! #GoLobos pic.twitter.com/xuDPkHxpBW

— New Mexico Lobos (@UNMLOBOS) November 14, 2017

She dominated plenty often, including a 16-second win at Nuttycombe in which she missed the course record by just four seconds, and a 16:01.8 5K in her first race with the team, setting a Notre Dame Invitational women’s record. After sitting out a year when she transferred from Liberty, Kurgat has just been a machine, and this race seems to be hers to lose.

2.) Can Missouri’s Karissa Schweizer repeat?

If anyone has a shot at keeping Kurgat from crossing the line first this weekend, it’d be last year’s champion, Missouri senior Karissa Schweizer. Schweizer became the first women’s individual champion in Missouri history with her dramatic finish in last year’s race, passing four runners in the final quarter-mile to run a 19:41.6, which was a PR.

MORE: FloSports to Stream 2017 NCAA Cross Country Championships Live

She hasn’t slowed down this season, racking up four wins, setting course records (hello, Vanderbilt’s Commodore Classic) and obliterating the SEC and Midwest Regionals heading into this weekend’s race. Her experience and savvy in big races vs. Kurgat’s explosiveness will be a great matchup to watch on Saturday.

3.) Does Mark Wetmore get No. 8?

To say coach Mark Wetmore has had a tremendous run at Colorado might be an understatement. In his 23 years at the helm of the Buffs’ program, he’s won seven team championships, and at least one title in men’s and women’s team and individual categories, a 4-for-4 showing.

Now, Colorado’s latest women’s team might be the one to bring Wetmore his first women’s team title since 2004. Wetmore, who was named USTFCCCA Mountain Region Women's Coach of the Year for a seventh year in a row, has tremendous depth: the Buffs’ five scorers finished between seventh add 16th at the Mountain Region Championships, where they took down Kurgat and No. 2-ranked New Mexico.

.@CUBuffsTrack's Mark Wetmore: #Pac12XC Women's Coach of the Year for SEVEN STRAIGHT SEASONS

More: https://t.co/wFpqcFLRmY pic.twitter.com/F1S1CBMm1I

— Pac-12 Network (@Pac12Network) October 31, 2017

Colorado’s fifth and final scorer, sophomore Briann Schwartz, ran a 20:33.7, which is a tremendous time for your tail runner, and just four spots behind her was the team’s potential tiebreaker, senior Melanie Nun. Six in the top 20 at a regional final, against the second-best team in the country? Wetmore’s team is in good shape.

4.) Time watch

At the turn of the century, the NCAA went from 5K to 6K being the standard distance for the women’s championship. In this current decade, 42 runners have broken the 20:00 mark. A handful will do so this year, but it’ll be interesting to see if Schweizer and Kurgat push each other toward the most recent sub-19:30 time, which was set by Molly Seidel of Wisconsin five years ago (19:28.6). The two could also opt for place over pace and focus on winning via strategy rather than blazing speed. In any case, keep an eye on the clock.

3 things to watch in the men’s races

1.) NAU vs. BYU is going to be awesome

After a year of one-upsmanship, we finally get the race college XC fans have been waiting for all season long: defending champion and No. 1-ranked Northern Arizona will face off with No. 2 BYU in this weekend’s marquee matchup.

NAU: How little-known Northern Arizona became a distance running powerhouse

NAU sports a tremendous 1-2 combo in Matt Baxter and Tyler Day, one of the three best duos in the country, along with Alabama’s Gilbert Kigen and Vincent Kiprop, and… BYU’s Rory Linkletter and Connor McMillan.

The depth on both teams is outrageous, especially in Northern Arizona’s case — just look at its performance at Nuttycombe, when the Jacks put three runners in the top five at one of the most competitive races of the season.

But BYU’s perfect 1-2-3-4-5 finish at the West Coast Conference final was more than enough evidence that the Cougars can put up a fight worthy of the defending champs.

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All of this to say, Saturday’s battle between these two teams should be a fitting end to a season that has been building and building all year long.

2.) Can Justyn Knight finish his career with a title?

They’re expected to vie for the team title, but neither NAU nor BYU sports the race’s individual favorite. That’d be Syracuse’s Justyn Knight.

He’ll face staunch competition from Grant Fisher of Stanford, among others, but Knight, a senior, has dominated the 2017 season, including his third straight Northeast Regional individual title. Outside of last year’s NCAA Championship, when he finished runner-up, and the 2015 championship, Knight hasn’t lost a race since the 2015 ACC Championship.

Justyn Knight, Grant Fisher, NAU men charge down the homestretch at Wisco. Catch these men at NCAAs this Saturday for another epic battle!

— FloTrack (@FloTrack) November 14, 2017

It’s been an outrageous run for Knight, and a national championship individual title would be a fitting capstone. Whether the Orange can turn what will likely be a great race from Knight into competition with BYU and NAU, however, is another question entirely. It’s possible, in theory. But Knight will probably be Syracuse’s shining moment on Saturday.

3.) Time watch

Of the 27 sub-29:00 10K times in NCAA XC men’s history, only five have come in the last 15 years. The most recent time under that brutal 29-minute threshold was 2015, Oregon’s Edward Cheserek (28:45). The four best times in the history of the event, of course, all came in that wild 1976 run, when Washington State’s Henry Rono won with a 28:06.6.

Don’t expect anyone from this year’s field to come anywhere near Rono’s time, or even the best time since turn of century (Texas Tech’s Kennedy Kithuka, 28:31 in 2012) but we could certainly see a sub-29:00 from Knight or Fisher, which would be lots of fun.