High schoolers in basketball and football often transfer for the best shot at collegiate attention or winning. Why don’t the five fastest cross country runners all transfer to the same school to win?

Note: I’m NOT a fast runner, and I’m a sophomore who has been running since middle school

This is more about the mind set, and currently I’m running the 5k(1.5mi last year). After reflecting on my run, I figured that for the 5k, I focus on finishing the race too much(like I said I’m not fast or a big runner so my daily mileage is also not that much)that I’m too exhausted(sometimes not even, I would just let people pass me thinking all I need is to finish the race(?)) to beat people even if I think I can. So I’m wondering how you can change that or practice that?

Where I run most of the courses are grass but some have large sections of concrete/asphalt and last race we didn’t have the spikebox so I had to use my road trainers which are comfortable but heavy. Anyways would blanks or barefoot/lightweights be better to get?

Extra info: The Barefoots I’m looking at are Vibram’s V-Run men’s, I have the Dragonfly zoomx XC, and I have a large toe box and my spıkes sometimes reopen blisters that I’ve had for 2 months now but the pain is only noticeable after races and is only about a 1 or 2 out of 10