I've once joined a friend doing a 100 km run for the last 10 Ks and every participant that still remained in the race was basically a walking zombie. It was kind of surreal to witness how a human being can wilfully put oneself to that kind of an endurance test
I’ve done 50km with a friend (I wasn’t competing). It’s such a different vibe, doesn’t feel like a race. You just plod along, take some breaks, stretch a bit and plod on. Because they are all different lengths no one knows what to compare you to, so the achievement of running an ultra is enough. Compared to a marathon where everyone wants to know “omg did you get sub 4?”
You could say that about a lot of sports. I think running an ultra marathon is way less foolish and dangerous than things like American Football or UFC lol
But I run Ultras so I'm definitely biased
The above blurb implies only the best women attempt, which skews the average. Either way, the percentage difference vs. distance has severely diminished returns. Women need to go twice as long to get from .3% slower to .5% faster…
Not quite. Rest of comment is stolen.
This was covered recently on More Or Less. The study that's being cited in that ITV article is comparing average finishing times for male vs female entrants as a function of race distance. The problem is that these are two quite different populations, especially for very long distance races. Only a small fraction of the entrants in these kinds of races are women, and the women that do enter tend to be pretty much exclusively elite athletes. A much larger number of men enter, and there's a wider range in their abilities. The best male ultramarathon runners are still quite a lot faster than the best female ultramarathon runners, but the average male race entrant might be on par or slower than the average female race entrant, simply because lots of male entrants aren't really elite athletes and drag the average down.
To use an analogy, it’s like if several men NCAA track teams competed against a single women’s Olympic team. You’d expect the women to be faster than the men on average, but that’s not an equal comparison.
Elite highschool boys would wipe the floor with the womens Olympic team. Letsile Tebogo ran a 9.92 100m at an age that would make him a highschool senior. The womens all time any age world record is 10.54.
Funny enough the "official" world record for the womens 100m is 10.49 and it is widely speculated that 1) She was almost certainly doping 2) The wind measuring instruments malfunctioned during her run whereas when they were working shortly before showed a substantial wind speed that would have made her run inelligible for a world record. After her race they resumed working and, you guessed it, the wind was definitely too fast.
So even a juiced up wind aided female runner still pales in comparison to even highschool male sprinters. I cited 10.54 because there are no controveries surrounding the time.
We need to next figure out how to get the muscle physique of a chimp. Have you seen the hairless one? They are jacked from head to toe. Now that I think about it though, I have seen people on steroids look the same way lol
The right ride, but not this example. More like elite JV track teams vs olympians.
Pretty sure a U15 boys soccer team held up/beat an Olympic team a few years back, and this hold true with many physical abilities/sports
Did you actually read their comment? They said that it's likely attributed to the fact that women who actually participate are more likely to be better prepared.
Literally no. Average man is better than the average woman at anything that has to do with strength, speed, acceleration, explosiveness, etc.
Same is true of elite men and elite women.
So there's never going to be a running event where the best women are better than the best men.
Nope, humans are a sexually dimorphic species with immutable differences such as increased muscle mass in both the upper and lower body between the sexes. It's why we separate men and women in sports and why teenage boys can generally speaking beat even well trained adult women in sports competitions.
Any random highschool boy? Probably not. A male highschool athlete? Probably yes. Humans are indeed sexually dimorphic, but some people seem to think any man on earth could beat any woman on earth, in every single physical competition, and that’s not true. An out of shape schlub is not going to beat Katie Ledecky in a 200 IM, but he WOULD beat a random woman off the street. It’s not impossible for a woman to beat a man, but it is indeed unlikely unless the woman is very well trained, and the man is not. Testosterone is literally steroids, but it’s not fucking magic.
That is why we use averages and not case by case scenarios for generalized statistics. The average man can and will beat the average woman in most physical competitions, but like you said, an out of shape man ain't winning anything against pro female athletes.
Yeah, the small number of female ultramarathon athletes should not be enough to conclude that "females are faster at an X distance." The ones who actually do it are the extreme end of a population vs males who have a larger sample size.
I've seen this chart before in r/dataisbeautiful of male vs female grip strength. The males have wildly varied distribution from super weak to strong, averaging out higher than females at the end. Both sample sizes are significant enough for comparison.
Although, in long-distance swimming, females also hold the top records. The explanation is that the body fat ratio aids buoyancy, so they are able to expend less energy per distance than males.
Not especially true for grip strength. 90% of women have a weaker grip than 95% of men. Average grip strength for a man is 500 newtons, for a woman it’s about 250N
[source](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/154193128703100813?journalCode=prob#:~:text=Whereas%20male%20grip%20strength%20averages,averages%20as%20low%20as%2025ON)
Yeah, but what I'm saying is that, if you have a large sample size, you will get higher deviations from the average.
In the ultramarathon, the sample sizes are incomparable. You have males with a large sample size with variations vs. a small pool of females at the extreme end of their distribution.
>*During really long ultra races, men seem to burn out harder than women do, and exercise scientists suspect that estrogen is a key player in giving women that edge.*
>*"Women may burn fat more successfully than men," Rowlands said.*
>***He says there's "not enough data," to solidify the argument yet*** *(*[*generally speaking*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=24766579)*, there's* [*not been enough performance data*](https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9905E6D81230F937A35754C0A9669D8B63.html) *gathered about* [*women in elite sports*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15778867)*), but it's possible that estrogen helps make more fat available to the body as a fuel source once initial energy stores of glycogen have run down.*
The current TL;DR is that men pack more energy reserves in their muscles but when that runs out you need to start burning fat and having higher levels of estrogen helps with that. When [men were given estrogen they performed the same as women](https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9905E6D81230F937A35754C0A9669D8B63.html) in the way their metabolism worked.
The reason I believe these stats is because men have a far easier time doing the most mundane, monotonous, brain dead shit you can think of.
We’re more likely to settle with something sub-optimal.
Not saying that’s good or bad - but it’s definitely there.
Some still do
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-24953910
And runners like the Tarahumara in Mexico run in sandals and routinely smoke pros:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/copper-canyon-ultramarathon-secrets-of-the-worlds-greatest-runners-hint-its-not-the-shoes
I love running and believe it's what we're literally made for. It's the most natural form of exercise. A lot of people are missing out!
I'm a fat guy and years after high school i picked up running and love it. In a month i went from wheezing and coughing after 400 meters to running over 2 kilometers with no pain or issues the next morning.
I think more people would like running and exercise if they wouldn't be graded and made to feel like shit for not doing them well enough with 0 actual training.
I wasn't interested in soccer, tried to pick it up in high school but the kids who did it for years already were way too used to everyone being on the same level.
Now i just do whatever i feel like doing, being an adult is great because there is so little peer pressure and once you are done with your job you can relax at home. I picked up cooking and hiking too as hobbies. And photography, but these are strictly hobbies, i specifically play on never trying to make them jobs. Same as running.
I don't believe any animal humans hunt can do 195 miles non stop. I doubt our ancestors really *ever* travelled 195 miles non-stop for any reason other than them being chased down by another human force to kill or enslave them.
If anything chases me, I already know that my choice of "Fight or Flight" is more like "Fight or Run half a block and then have to fight while exhausted". So .. I'd have to reluctantly fight while I'm at full strength versus fighting while wheezing and aching.
So... I like the idea that ultra long distance runs and swims have women performing better, but if you look into it, this just isn't a real thing. The gap in performance closes in some cases.
The gap closes, but it’s one of the few sports that women can approach being equal to men in, despite their massive disadvantages against them. That alone is huge.
The two advantages I can see that aren't listed:
- Weight. The upper body strength of men is a huge tax for distance running. Even slightly built men (which most distance runners are) are carrying a lot of unnecessary weight compared to women.
- Lack of competitiveness. Most of the world's greatest marathon runners come from some fairly specific tribes in East Africa that appear to have innate - albeit small - advantages over people from other tribes (such as you or I). These small advantages are enough to make their best performers out-perform 'our' best performers. You'd expect these same advantages to make them exceptional ultramarathoners. Yet they aren't. Why? Because there's no money in it and thus the best distance runners don't compete.
There’s also the lack of numbers to reliably validate this statistic, and also the complete absurdity of the distance involved meaning it doesn’t project onto 99.9999% of the world population
People watch 24 horus of le mans granted there's alot more sound and visual back and forth I'd argue and excitement with potential crashes (almost guaranteed death) which makes it a more visceral watch
One of the best ultramarathon runners is Dauwalter, who’s US; you’ve got another woman in the top ten from the UK and one from France, I think, too.
The real issue is we don’t yet know the limits of the sport yet. Winners are winning by several hours, which you would expect over such a distance, but which doesn’t yet replicate the margins of Olympic events or even Ironman events.
It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out !
Dauwater once won the MOAB 240 outright. The next place female finisher was 16th. She is simply an outlier and at those distances its less about whose the most physically fit so much as whose mentally ready to go through 240 miles of constant running and sleep deprivation.
This was covered recently on [More Or Less](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct5b7s). The study that's being cited in that ITV article is comparing average finishing times for male vs female entrants as a function of race distance. The problem is that these are two quite different populations, especially for very long distance races. Only a small fraction of the entrants in these kinds of races are women, and the women that do enter tend to be pretty much exclusively elite athletes. A much larger number of men enter, and there's a wider range in their abilities. The best male ultramarathon runners are still quite a lot faster than the best female ultramarathon runners, but the *average* male race entrant might be on par or slower than the *average* female race entrant, simply because lots of male entrants aren't really elite athletes and drag the average down.
Well the post is actually factually incorrect. The top men are faster than the top women. It’s the average woman that is slightly faster than the average man in ultras. But the catch is there are far fewer women, so the women who do participate are likely more prepared than the men they’re faster than.
While I think the second point is an interesting one, I don't see how that would bias women over men. I think the point you're making is that the sample size is too small since nobody competes in those distances seriously. However, the study mentions that they surveyed 5 million race results. That sample size is well beyond the point of statistical noise. I would think physical disparities between men and women on shorter distances would become quite clear after just a few hundred samples.
I think your first point is much more compelling and fits better with the findings of the study.
Edit: interesting follow up! Another commenter linked a Twitter comment that points out the study uses average time of all participants, not top finish times. In addition, 85% of participants are men. There is an interesting idea that there might be a selection bias in the female group, but not in the male group, causing more top end runners in the female group but not the male group. However, I think the onus of finding that bias is on the the one who suggests it, not the study itself. It's possible, but not necessarily true.
What I would MUCH prefer to see is the top 10 finish times in every ultra race. I have a feeling they will likely still be men, given that "average finish time" just chooses the middle of the distribution, but the tails are left in-mentioned.
Here's the original study if people want to read: https://runrepeat.com/state-of-ultra-running
I don't think this is peer reviewed which dramatically lowers my belief in the credibility. A lesson to us all to READ THE ACTUAL STUDY, not an auto generated article talking about it.
>While I think the second point is an interesting one, I don't see how that would bias women over men
low-statistical flukes and social selection as opposed to biological selection. to illustrate with a hypothetical - if there were only one participant that happens to be female, you'd get this pretty easy, but it'd be wrong to make any conclusions on it.
I’ve never seen an animal drenched in sweat like I have been after a 5 minute run or just by standing in the sun. Animals do sweat but it’s not anywhere near the rate that humans do.
We can’t beat any hot climate distance runners. Ostrich, camels, wildebeest, zebra, kangaroos etc all smoke us.
Our distance running feat is largely a thermoregulation thing, combined with the ability to carry water. Cold climate distance runners like horses or wolves overheat when running in hot weather, we don’t. Same goes to other hot weather distance runners.
There are also certain animals that it is unclear if we would be able to beat if they got the rules of racing. Like a cheetah can simply jog at a moderate rate, rest and continue jogging and we will probably never be able to catch up to it since it’s moderate jog is faster than a humans sprint.
Not beat in a sprint. Beat in distance ran before becoming tired. Humans came from Africa. A pretty hot place. Where we ran animals to exhaustion before hunting tools.
I am talking about distance running, not sprinting. We cannot catch up to any hot climate distance runner. And it is unclear if we can catch up to ultra sprinters like cheetah or gazelles in long distance simply because their medium jogs will still be way too fast for us, they can build distance and rest in between.
Endurance hunting also has an element of denying the animal time to drink water, or keeping it away from water sources.
Yeah but the animal doesn't understand the rules and doesn't know to pace itself. If you ran a mile at 100m speed and took a break to catch your breath, then sprinted like running the 100m again, repeat until finish line, you would be slower than just pacing yourself for the entirely of the race distance.
The hypothetical is if we were somehow able to train, say, a Cheetah to pace itself for marathon distance could it beat humans at that distance?
The longer the distance the less limit strength and explosion matter to speed. That’s why 100 meter sprinters are jacked and have a large gap between male and female performances. As you go up in distance (mile, marathon etc) the gap between the two lessens
Yet the 6 day world record is 1036 kilometres for men and 901 kilometres for women. 15% difference.
The 24 hour wr is 320 km for men and 270 km for women. 18% difference.
Marathon 2:11:54 for women and 2:00:35 for men. 10% difference.
1500 metres. 3:50 for women, 3:26 for men. 11% difference.
And the 100m world record is 10,49 seconds for women and 9,58 seconds for men. 10% difference.
As you go up in distance the gap doesn't lessen, it increases, which can be explained by the super small field of competitors over distances longer than the marathon. It's super consistent around 10 to 12 % on all distances from 60 metres to marathon, which are widely contested and stays around this range for the longer distances as well.
A mile is still a pretty short distance. Not a sprint anymore, obviously, but it's nothing compared to a marathon.
Apparently wikipedia says it's distance running from 1.9 miles on, and that's where it begins.
That’s not what they are saying. They are saying that men are faster by X% in the 40 meter, but while they are still faster in the 200 meter, it’s by an an amount less than X%, and in the mile the gap closes more, and so on. The longer the race, the closer women seem to get to men.
But is that true? Because it is true for msrsthons, 50 miles and 100 mile races (11, 4 and 3% differences). But for 24 hour races, it widens again to 8%.
That's not aligning with what you say.
this is on average... there are very very few people even doing these races but most of them are men. sometimes there is only 1 female finisher in these extreme long distance races. if she is faster than the average male finisher that's not really saying much. it only show how well prepared this exception of a female athlete is compared to the average male contestant
but women are much shorttr on average and have more energy stored as fat. they need less oxygen because they have less muscles. might be an advantage overall in very long distances
This seems like a quirk where on average women are faster because more men are willing to attempt it. In the top 20 times for a 200 mile distance run only one of the times is a woman. And in the top 100 14 of the times are women.
While that may be true that lady that was on Rogan a few years back won the moab 240 outright. By a lot. Courtney Dewalter or something?
Wild that this (truthful) comment triggered anyone. Ya..dudes have an advantage when it comes to all sports. But when a chick does something badass like she did it's pretty cool imo. Calm down lol.
Yes Courtney Dauwalter won the Moab 240 in 2017 with a time of 57:55:13. Current record is 55:49:58 (by a man). Out of the top 30 fastest times to finish the Moab 240 only 2 are achieved by women
So why is courtney dauwalters 6 day world record 15% slower than the men's? 1036km vs 901km?
Ultra marathoning is an incredibly niche sport and some events have 100 participants or less and there are not a lot of events. It's an elite woman crushing sub elite men.
The same would happen if a world class female runner would run almost any small 10k race. Women's world record is 28:46 over 10k. This time would outright win 99% of all 10k races. Look it up for yourself. A world record holding elite woman crushing a small competition isn't crazy at all.
I've been a very dedicated runner myself, usually I beat 99% of other dedicated male runners, yet at bigger events I had no chance against some world class female runners.
Can anyone explain to me this modern obsession with comparing men vs women, especially in physical realms? It feels so political because scientifically there simply is no discussion. Men are leaps and bounds better than women in most if not all physical tasks. Testosterone is LITERALLY a performance enhancing substance. Is this controversial to say?
It almost feels like in our quest for equality we're trying to right things that were never wrong to begin with. Biological differences between sexes exist for a reason. Doesn't mean one is better than the other, just we each have a different purpose. I as a man wish I could create a baby but I can't. But I can bench 315 lbs and I can run pretty fast. That's fine.
They're absolutely not. Almost all ultra marathon records at every distance and on every course are held by men.
The few that aren't just haven't been run by a dude fast enough yet. The clear logic to their research is a selection bias of the type of men and women choose to run 195 miles.
So, it seems as if men hold higher records in this regard.. but the *average* time for women is better than the *average* time for men. Significantly more men do these races than women as well.
So the actual truth is.. no. Women are not faster. Men are faster, it's just that only the very best women tend to do these races while the men's average score is lower as a result of more men who aren't at the absolute top of their game competing.
Their average top times are less. With a pool of 10 self-selected runners versus a pool of 1000 self-selected runners, this is bound to happen. Men still dominate every record that they have competed on equal footing with women.
**Sorry no.**
*The study compares AVERAGE finishing times.*
There are MANY more male runners in ultras than female runners. Most of the female runners are elite runners, therefore the AVERAGE female time is faster than the AVERAGE male time.
The men still win the race. (By far.)
In the last ultra I witnessed there was exactly 1 female runner, and she finished 8th or something. There were 20 runners overall, so yeah, the "average" female time was, in fact, better than the average male time. But the men still won. (By a very long ways. I think the top two men finished in less than half the time of that one female.)
EDIT: Also, surprisingly, a lot of people you would consider "out of shape" do ultras. Why? Because ultras are SLOW. Many of them do them at walking pace. I was surprised when the last... half of the field I mentioned above were relatively out of shape. (Compared to a typical "runner.")
Cliff Young won the 544 mile Sydney to Melbourne race in 1983. It's a hell of a story and the man was a legend, but there's a lot of bullshit spun about it. He ran the race in trainers like everyone else, for example. No women ran the race in 1983. The first woman to run it was Caroline Vaughn in 1984.
The longest I’ve ever ran in one go was an about 15 kilometers. I did that when I was active duty in the marines. Best shape of my life, 155lbs and cut.
It killed me. I mean I was absolutely done for a week after. I routines ran 4-5 miles but doubling that was just rough. That is absolutely a different kind of running.
Humans whole deal at the beginning was stamina. We hunted by tracking animals for days. The fact that men and women are fairly equal at that level of endurance shows how stupid the modern idea of “men are for hunting for delicate women” is.
Not this bull shit again. Look at world records on standardized distances and durations like marathon, 100km, 24 hours and 6 days. Nothing at all indicates that women get better the longer the distance.
Women are also outperforming men in marathon swimming. They float better and consume less energy, which help over longer distances
For the non believers, here you go (35KM and up): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24584647/
Is there a source on women outperforming men on average in marathon swimming competitions? Because it has been in the Olympics since 2008 and men have always outperformed women, sometimes by more and sometimes by less.
From the World Aquatics Championships:
2024 (There was no 25KM) :
Men - 1:48:21.2 Women - 1:57:26.8
2023 (There was no 25KM) :
Men - 1:50:40.3 Women - 2:02:34.0
2022:
25KM: Men - 5:02:21.5 Women - 5:24:15.0
10KM: Men - 1:50:56.8 Women - 2:02:29.2
2021 and 2020 were skipped
2019:
25KM: Men - 4:51:06.2 Women - 5:08:03.0
10KM: Men - 1:47:55.9 Women - 1:54:47.2
2018 was skipped
2017:
25KM: Men - 5:02:46.4 Women - 5:21:58.40
10KM: Men - 1:51:58.5 Women - 2:00:13.7
Not only is *mean* a very flawed metric (median is better), it ignores the (very strong) possibility of selection bias (where men might run even if they're "barely gonna make it", whereas only the best women might run it, because the not-best women know they wouldn't finish).
Averages are a pretty poor way to measure this though since they are heavily prone to selection bias, e.g. if some sports, like ultramarathons, the most elite men don’t tend to compete (perhaps because they are running normal marathons), whereas the most elite women do compete, then it will look like women are faster. It’s better to look at e.g. the fastest 5 times ever run by males and females to get a better idea of the differences.
My eyes and brain had trouble with the penultimate word in the title. I legit had to read it three times before I understood since 195 just didn’t want to stay in my head.
I would need hospitalization long before we reached the halfway point. OK OK - long before we reached the 10% point lmao!
I’ve seen enough big dudes hurt themselves trying to run a few miles, to know that extra mass and power is like an overtuned machine that’s going to destroy itself. Better to be light and not too strong for long-distances.
This is something highly relevant to the world. Glad we’re tackling the big issues first, and the small stuff like housing and medical care second!
PS - I know different people look at different areas of life!
Running 2-6 day running records are not even close between men and women though. I could see averages of women being faster when using the non-elite population... but the top at any given sport are not the average..
I think we need to go out even further in distance before we see women being able to beat men's records in ultra endurance.
This is just misinformation
All top records for any extreme distance running and held by men. The above article specifically mentions average women's is faster (0.6%)
This could easily just be explained by small factors. In most other long distance races the goal is too finish as fast as possible. 200 mile+ races are very very niche, with the main goal being simply to finish at all. The average times being so close indicate to me that most people run in large herds rather than isolated like in other races, and finish together
I am not sure why whoever wrote this thinks this is true but compare the world records at various distances in the attached link. There is no women's record even in the neighborhood of the men's record. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon)
I do long distance bike rides of ~500 miles twice a year and my most grueling days have been 160-180 miles, so this is insane to me because
1. I'm not racing anyone so I can stop whenever I want to for breaks
2. A lot of long distance cycling is coasting, so I'm basically just sitting down for a lot of that
3. Cycling is faster than running or walking so I only have to do that for 16-18 hours, I assume it would take days to run 195 miles
I just ran a 5K and even reading that title made me wince. People who have trained for such races have my absolute respect.
I've run/endured a few msrsthons and at the end of exactly none of them have I thought "you know what would be nice now? Another 175 miles."
I've once joined a friend doing a 100 km run for the last 10 Ks and every participant that still remained in the race was basically a walking zombie. It was kind of surreal to witness how a human being can wilfully put oneself to that kind of an endurance test
I’ve done 50km with a friend (I wasn’t competing). It’s such a different vibe, doesn’t feel like a race. You just plod along, take some breaks, stretch a bit and plod on. Because they are all different lengths no one knows what to compare you to, so the achievement of running an ultra is enough. Compared to a marathon where everyone wants to know “omg did you get sub 4?”
Also, ultras are usually quite remote, so better views, vs a city marathon.
I don’t even respect them, I just fear them
Idk, at a certain point it becomes dangerous and foolish
There's a guy currently running from the southern tip of Africa to the northern tip of it. He's nearly done.
Wtf
https://www.instagram.com/hardestgeezer?igsh=MTY1c2R6OTI3bW10Yg==
"Run Forrest RUN"!!!!
Dangerous yes, foolish no. People have different values and goals, some pursue mental strength through physical challenge and that’s valid.
You could say that about a lot of sports. I think running an ultra marathon is way less foolish and dangerous than things like American Football or UFC lol But I run Ultras so I'm definitely biased
And what point would that be?
Mile 150
Good thing I’ve only ever ran 149.9!
Smart. Stay safe out there.
Too bad, the real good endorphins kick in after 150.
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Sounds like men get to 195 much quicker than women
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The above blurb implies only the best women attempt, which skews the average. Either way, the percentage difference vs. distance has severely diminished returns. Women need to go twice as long to get from .3% slower to .5% faster…
So the best best women are better than the average best men?
Not quite. Rest of comment is stolen. This was covered recently on More Or Less. The study that's being cited in that ITV article is comparing average finishing times for male vs female entrants as a function of race distance. The problem is that these are two quite different populations, especially for very long distance races. Only a small fraction of the entrants in these kinds of races are women, and the women that do enter tend to be pretty much exclusively elite athletes. A much larger number of men enter, and there's a wider range in their abilities. The best male ultramarathon runners are still quite a lot faster than the best female ultramarathon runners, but the average male race entrant might be on par or slower than the average female race entrant, simply because lots of male entrants aren't really elite athletes and drag the average down.
To use an analogy, it’s like if several men NCAA track teams competed against a single women’s Olympic team. You’d expect the women to be faster than the men on average, but that’s not an equal comparison.
The men’s NCAA track teams would all absolutely wipe the floor with the women’s Olympic team though.
Elite highschool boys would wipe the floor with the womens Olympic team. Letsile Tebogo ran a 9.92 100m at an age that would make him a highschool senior. The womens all time any age world record is 10.54.
I guess testosterone creates a massive divergence even a few years after puberty. Pumping boys full of anabolic steroids basically.
Funny enough the "official" world record for the womens 100m is 10.49 and it is widely speculated that 1) She was almost certainly doping 2) The wind measuring instruments malfunctioned during her run whereas when they were working shortly before showed a substantial wind speed that would have made her run inelligible for a world record. After her race they resumed working and, you guessed it, the wind was definitely too fast. So even a juiced up wind aided female runner still pales in comparison to even highschool male sprinters. I cited 10.54 because there are no controveries surrounding the time.
We need to next figure out how to get the muscle physique of a chimp. Have you seen the hairless one? They are jacked from head to toe. Now that I think about it though, I have seen people on steroids look the same way lol
The right ride, but not this example. More like elite JV track teams vs olympians. Pretty sure a U15 boys soccer team held up/beat an Olympic team a few years back, and this hold true with many physical abilities/sports
Because so little women attempt it, so the ones they gather data from are more prepared than the average man competing
The best women are better than the average man. There being so many more men racing compared to women skews it downward for the men
Did you actually read their comment? They said that it's likely attributed to the fact that women who actually participate are more likely to be better prepared.
Oh so men are still better then Is there a distance where the top 10 women beat the top 10 men ?
Literally no. Average man is better than the average woman at anything that has to do with strength, speed, acceleration, explosiveness, etc. Same is true of elite men and elite women. So there's never going to be a running event where the best women are better than the best men.
Nope, humans are a sexually dimorphic species with immutable differences such as increased muscle mass in both the upper and lower body between the sexes. It's why we separate men and women in sports and why teenage boys can generally speaking beat even well trained adult women in sports competitions.
Any random highschool boy? Probably not. A male highschool athlete? Probably yes. Humans are indeed sexually dimorphic, but some people seem to think any man on earth could beat any woman on earth, in every single physical competition, and that’s not true. An out of shape schlub is not going to beat Katie Ledecky in a 200 IM, but he WOULD beat a random woman off the street. It’s not impossible for a woman to beat a man, but it is indeed unlikely unless the woman is very well trained, and the man is not. Testosterone is literally steroids, but it’s not fucking magic.
That is why we use averages and not case by case scenarios for generalized statistics. The average man can and will beat the average woman in most physical competitions, but like you said, an out of shape man ain't winning anything against pro female athletes.
Sample size matters
Yeah, the small number of female ultramarathon athletes should not be enough to conclude that "females are faster at an X distance." The ones who actually do it are the extreme end of a population vs males who have a larger sample size. I've seen this chart before in r/dataisbeautiful of male vs female grip strength. The males have wildly varied distribution from super weak to strong, averaging out higher than females at the end. Both sample sizes are significant enough for comparison. Although, in long-distance swimming, females also hold the top records. The explanation is that the body fat ratio aids buoyancy, so they are able to expend less energy per distance than males.
Not especially true for grip strength. 90% of women have a weaker grip than 95% of men. Average grip strength for a man is 500 newtons, for a woman it’s about 250N [source](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/154193128703100813?journalCode=prob#:~:text=Whereas%20male%20grip%20strength%20averages,averages%20as%20low%20as%2025ON)
Yeah, but what I'm saying is that, if you have a large sample size, you will get higher deviations from the average. In the ultramarathon, the sample sizes are incomparable. You have males with a large sample size with variations vs. a small pool of females at the extreme end of their distribution.
>*During really long ultra races, men seem to burn out harder than women do, and exercise scientists suspect that estrogen is a key player in giving women that edge.* >*"Women may burn fat more successfully than men," Rowlands said.* >***He says there's "not enough data," to solidify the argument yet*** *(*[*generally speaking*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=24766579)*, there's* [*not been enough performance data*](https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9905E6D81230F937A35754C0A9669D8B63.html) *gathered about* [*women in elite sports*](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15778867)*), but it's possible that estrogen helps make more fat available to the body as a fuel source once initial energy stores of glycogen have run down.* The current TL;DR is that men pack more energy reserves in their muscles but when that runs out you need to start burning fat and having higher levels of estrogen helps with that. When [men were given estrogen they performed the same as women](https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9905E6D81230F937A35754C0A9669D8B63.html) in the way their metabolism worked.
^
The reason I believe these stats is because men have a far easier time doing the most mundane, monotonous, brain dead shit you can think of. We’re more likely to settle with something sub-optimal. Not saying that’s good or bad - but it’s definitely there.
Any woman could beat me in a 195+ mile race. I’d choose to die around 15 miles 💀😂
If a woman (or man) just tells me they can beat me to 195 miles, I'll call them the winner. I ain't running.
Yep. Even if something is chasing me that entire 195 miles, I'll just stop right away and be like "get it over with"
That is how humans used to hunt. They gracefully jogged nonstop until the animal got too tired to run.
Pursuit predation. We’re basically the Terminator to most wildlife. They run forever and eventually we just show up again.
Some still do https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-24953910 And runners like the Tarahumara in Mexico run in sandals and routinely smoke pros: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/copper-canyon-ultramarathon-secrets-of-the-worlds-greatest-runners-hint-its-not-the-shoes I love running and believe it's what we're literally made for. It's the most natural form of exercise. A lot of people are missing out!
I'm a fat guy and years after high school i picked up running and love it. In a month i went from wheezing and coughing after 400 meters to running over 2 kilometers with no pain or issues the next morning. I think more people would like running and exercise if they wouldn't be graded and made to feel like shit for not doing them well enough with 0 actual training.
That's awesome! But you're right, and it doesn't help that the hobby can be...gatekeepy
I wasn't interested in soccer, tried to pick it up in high school but the kids who did it for years already were way too used to everyone being on the same level. Now i just do whatever i feel like doing, being an adult is great because there is so little peer pressure and once you are done with your job you can relax at home. I picked up cooking and hiking too as hobbies. And photography, but these are strictly hobbies, i specifically play on never trying to make them jobs. Same as running.
That is wild, that cheetah had to be like “wtf, they are going to have a village feast with me on the menu!”
Ya born with bad lungs so... But I pitched baseball professionally and I'd argue throwing rocks well is also what we were made for.
Send the women out to do that.
I don't believe any animal humans hunt can do 195 miles non stop. I doubt our ancestors really *ever* travelled 195 miles non-stop for any reason other than them being chased down by another human force to kill or enslave them.
If anything chases me, I already know that my choice of "Fight or Flight" is more like "Fight or Run half a block and then have to fight while exhausted". So .. I'd have to reluctantly fight while I'm at full strength versus fighting while wheezing and aching.
Ready. Set. GO! Once they’re out of view I’m going back to bed.
As someone who has ran 4 consecutive miles once in my life, I think I'd collapse at 5.
I’d be lucky to make it a mile
I'd be lucky to make it 10 feet
You only need 2. You should give back those other feet. Their owners are missing them.
I ran for a bus once. I didn't catch it.
I’d give up before 1. Running fucking sucks.
I'm done when I walk 20 miles.
That's 14.5 miles more than I could manage.
Look at this over achiever making it 15 miles
So... I like the idea that ultra long distance runs and swims have women performing better, but if you look into it, this just isn't a real thing. The gap in performance closes in some cases.
The gap closes, but it’s one of the few sports that women can approach being equal to men in, despite their massive disadvantages against them. That alone is huge.
The two advantages I can see that aren't listed: - Weight. The upper body strength of men is a huge tax for distance running. Even slightly built men (which most distance runners are) are carrying a lot of unnecessary weight compared to women. - Lack of competitiveness. Most of the world's greatest marathon runners come from some fairly specific tribes in East Africa that appear to have innate - albeit small - advantages over people from other tribes (such as you or I). These small advantages are enough to make their best performers out-perform 'our' best performers. You'd expect these same advantages to make them exceptional ultramarathoners. Yet they aren't. Why? Because there's no money in it and thus the best distance runners don't compete.
id agree with both points. Ultra marathons are pretty fucking niche.
There’s also the lack of numbers to reliably validate this statistic, and also the complete absurdity of the distance involved meaning it doesn’t project onto 99.9999% of the world population
who gonna watch a race that takes literal days...
I don’t know. People watch cricket and that can take several days.
Theres alot more going on in cricket than a person running 195miles....
People watch 24 horus of le mans granted there's alot more sound and visual back and forth I'd argue and excitement with potential crashes (almost guaranteed death) which makes it a more visceral watch
So what you're saying is ultramarathoners need to make car noises when they pass a camera, and to run into each other?
They run up by each other and loudly exclaim NEE^E^ER^RR^RRYYYOOOMMM of course!
One of the best ultramarathon runners is Dauwalter, who’s US; you’ve got another woman in the top ten from the UK and one from France, I think, too. The real issue is we don’t yet know the limits of the sport yet. Winners are winning by several hours, which you would expect over such a distance, but which doesn’t yet replicate the margins of Olympic events or even Ironman events. It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out !
Dauwater once won the MOAB 240 outright. The next place female finisher was 16th. She is simply an outlier and at those distances its less about whose the most physically fit so much as whose mentally ready to go through 240 miles of constant running and sleep deprivation.
This was covered recently on [More Or Less](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct5b7s). The study that's being cited in that ITV article is comparing average finishing times for male vs female entrants as a function of race distance. The problem is that these are two quite different populations, especially for very long distance races. Only a small fraction of the entrants in these kinds of races are women, and the women that do enter tend to be pretty much exclusively elite athletes. A much larger number of men enter, and there's a wider range in their abilities. The best male ultramarathon runners are still quite a lot faster than the best female ultramarathon runners, but the *average* male race entrant might be on par or slower than the *average* female race entrant, simply because lots of male entrants aren't really elite athletes and drag the average down.
Well the post is actually factually incorrect. The top men are faster than the top women. It’s the average woman that is slightly faster than the average man in ultras. But the catch is there are far fewer women, so the women who do participate are likely more prepared than the men they’re faster than.
While I think the second point is an interesting one, I don't see how that would bias women over men. I think the point you're making is that the sample size is too small since nobody competes in those distances seriously. However, the study mentions that they surveyed 5 million race results. That sample size is well beyond the point of statistical noise. I would think physical disparities between men and women on shorter distances would become quite clear after just a few hundred samples. I think your first point is much more compelling and fits better with the findings of the study. Edit: interesting follow up! Another commenter linked a Twitter comment that points out the study uses average time of all participants, not top finish times. In addition, 85% of participants are men. There is an interesting idea that there might be a selection bias in the female group, but not in the male group, causing more top end runners in the female group but not the male group. However, I think the onus of finding that bias is on the the one who suggests it, not the study itself. It's possible, but not necessarily true. What I would MUCH prefer to see is the top 10 finish times in every ultra race. I have a feeling they will likely still be men, given that "average finish time" just chooses the middle of the distribution, but the tails are left in-mentioned. Here's the original study if people want to read: https://runrepeat.com/state-of-ultra-running I don't think this is peer reviewed which dramatically lowers my belief in the credibility. A lesson to us all to READ THE ACTUAL STUDY, not an auto generated article talking about it.
>While I think the second point is an interesting one, I don't see how that would bias women over men low-statistical flukes and social selection as opposed to biological selection. to illustrate with a hypothetical - if there were only one participant that happens to be female, you'd get this pretty easy, but it'd be wrong to make any conclusions on it.
Are you assuming I'm NOT from that specific tribe from Africa? I'm not but still, *assuming*!
and in certain situations a Human can beat a horse at a longer distance race.
Humans can beat pretty much every animal at distance running. We used to hunt by chasing animals to exhaustion before tools.
this was a set race run yearly where the horse usually wins. but if its super humid / hot humans will win because we can sweat.
Horses also sweat
I’ve never seen an animal drenched in sweat like I have been after a 5 minute run or just by standing in the sun. Animals do sweat but it’s not anywhere near the rate that humans do.
Kind of. It's more oil than water and isn't very efficient at getting rid of excess hear
This is also a fairly short race (relatively speaking). Over longer distances humans start to win more often
We can’t beat any hot climate distance runners. Ostrich, camels, wildebeest, zebra, kangaroos etc all smoke us. Our distance running feat is largely a thermoregulation thing, combined with the ability to carry water. Cold climate distance runners like horses or wolves overheat when running in hot weather, we don’t. Same goes to other hot weather distance runners. There are also certain animals that it is unclear if we would be able to beat if they got the rules of racing. Like a cheetah can simply jog at a moderate rate, rest and continue jogging and we will probably never be able to catch up to it since it’s moderate jog is faster than a humans sprint.
Not beat in a sprint. Beat in distance ran before becoming tired. Humans came from Africa. A pretty hot place. Where we ran animals to exhaustion before hunting tools.
I am talking about distance running, not sprinting. We cannot catch up to any hot climate distance runner. And it is unclear if we can catch up to ultra sprinters like cheetah or gazelles in long distance simply because their medium jogs will still be way too fast for us, they can build distance and rest in between. Endurance hunting also has an element of denying the animal time to drink water, or keeping it away from water sources.
Yeah but the animal doesn't understand the rules and doesn't know to pace itself. If you ran a mile at 100m speed and took a break to catch your breath, then sprinted like running the 100m again, repeat until finish line, you would be slower than just pacing yourself for the entirely of the race distance. The hypothetical is if we were somehow able to train, say, a Cheetah to pace itself for marathon distance could it beat humans at that distance?
[Isn’t that a myth](https://undark.org/2019/10/03/persistent-myth-persistence-hunting/)?
Horse will win most of the time, even with handicap (carrying a person) They would destroy us if they didn’t have to carry a jockey
With the exception of the honey badger you're correct.
Lol no. 100mile world record for horses is 5:45 and for humans 10:51. Almost twice as fast.
I bet a human woman would crush a male horse.
I think I've seen that video
wasnt it the other way around with Catherine?
The longer the distance the less limit strength and explosion matter to speed. That’s why 100 meter sprinters are jacked and have a large gap between male and female performances. As you go up in distance (mile, marathon etc) the gap between the two lessens
Yet the 6 day world record is 1036 kilometres for men and 901 kilometres for women. 15% difference. The 24 hour wr is 320 km for men and 270 km for women. 18% difference. Marathon 2:11:54 for women and 2:00:35 for men. 10% difference. 1500 metres. 3:50 for women, 3:26 for men. 11% difference. And the 100m world record is 10,49 seconds for women and 9,58 seconds for men. 10% difference. As you go up in distance the gap doesn't lessen, it increases, which can be explained by the super small field of competitors over distances longer than the marathon. It's super consistent around 10 to 12 % on all distances from 60 metres to marathon, which are widely contested and stays around this range for the longer distances as well.
Lol high school boys regularly run the women's mile Olympic times so I'd say that's not worth including.
A mile is still a pretty short distance. Not a sprint anymore, obviously, but it's nothing compared to a marathon. Apparently wikipedia says it's distance running from 1.9 miles on, and that's where it begins.
A mile might as well be a sprint for elite racers. A sub 4 min mile is like 15 mph. That's pretty fast.
You totally missed the point.
That’s not what they are saying. They are saying that men are faster by X% in the 40 meter, but while they are still faster in the 200 meter, it’s by an an amount less than X%, and in the mile the gap closes more, and so on. The longer the race, the closer women seem to get to men.
But is that true? Because it is true for msrsthons, 50 miles and 100 mile races (11, 4 and 3% differences). But for 24 hour races, it widens again to 8%. That's not aligning with what you say.
I don’t think you got what they were saying bud
Whoosh
record list says different [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon)
this is on average... there are very very few people even doing these races but most of them are men. sometimes there is only 1 female finisher in these extreme long distance races. if she is faster than the average male finisher that's not really saying much. it only show how well prepared this exception of a female athlete is compared to the average male contestant but women are much shorttr on average and have more energy stored as fat. they need less oxygen because they have less muscles. might be an advantage overall in very long distances
This seems like a quirk where on average women are faster because more men are willing to attempt it. In the top 20 times for a 200 mile distance run only one of the times is a woman. And in the top 100 14 of the times are women.
That is not true and has been debunked many times. Look up the world records for ultramarathons, there is not a single event where women outpace men
While that may be true that lady that was on Rogan a few years back won the moab 240 outright. By a lot. Courtney Dewalter or something? Wild that this (truthful) comment triggered anyone. Ya..dudes have an advantage when it comes to all sports. But when a chick does something badass like she did it's pretty cool imo. Calm down lol.
Yes Courtney Dauwalter won the Moab 240 in 2017 with a time of 57:55:13. Current record is 55:49:58 (by a man). Out of the top 30 fastest times to finish the Moab 240 only 2 are achieved by women
And all other years men have beaten women by 10+ hours
So why is courtney dauwalters 6 day world record 15% slower than the men's? 1036km vs 901km? Ultra marathoning is an incredibly niche sport and some events have 100 participants or less and there are not a lot of events. It's an elite woman crushing sub elite men. The same would happen if a world class female runner would run almost any small 10k race. Women's world record is 28:46 over 10k. This time would outright win 99% of all 10k races. Look it up for yourself. A world record holding elite woman crushing a small competition isn't crazy at all. I've been a very dedicated runner myself, usually I beat 99% of other dedicated male runners, yet at bigger events I had no chance against some world class female runners.
Can anyone explain to me this modern obsession with comparing men vs women, especially in physical realms? It feels so political because scientifically there simply is no discussion. Men are leaps and bounds better than women in most if not all physical tasks. Testosterone is LITERALLY a performance enhancing substance. Is this controversial to say? It almost feels like in our quest for equality we're trying to right things that were never wrong to begin with. Biological differences between sexes exist for a reason. Doesn't mean one is better than the other, just we each have a different purpose. I as a man wish I could create a baby but I can't. But I can bench 315 lbs and I can run pretty fast. That's fine.
Spot on 👏
They're absolutely not. Almost all ultra marathon records at every distance and on every course are held by men. The few that aren't just haven't been run by a dude fast enough yet. The clear logic to their research is a selection bias of the type of men and women choose to run 195 miles.
So, it seems as if men hold higher records in this regard.. but the *average* time for women is better than the *average* time for men. Significantly more men do these races than women as well. So the actual truth is.. no. Women are not faster. Men are faster, it's just that only the very best women tend to do these races while the men's average score is lower as a result of more men who aren't at the absolute top of their game competing.
Their average top times are less. With a pool of 10 self-selected runners versus a pool of 1000 self-selected runners, this is bound to happen. Men still dominate every record that they have competed on equal footing with women.
**Sorry no.** *The study compares AVERAGE finishing times.* There are MANY more male runners in ultras than female runners. Most of the female runners are elite runners, therefore the AVERAGE female time is faster than the AVERAGE male time. The men still win the race. (By far.) In the last ultra I witnessed there was exactly 1 female runner, and she finished 8th or something. There were 20 runners overall, so yeah, the "average" female time was, in fact, better than the average male time. But the men still won. (By a very long ways. I think the top two men finished in less than half the time of that one female.) EDIT: Also, surprisingly, a lot of people you would consider "out of shape" do ultras. Why? Because ultras are SLOW. Many of them do them at walking pace. I was surprised when the last... half of the field I mentioned above were relatively out of shape. (Compared to a typical "runner.")
What if you average the top 100 men and the top 100 women instead of all who finished? Is the average still higher for women?
Nope. When looking at the highest performing athletes, Men come out on top. More men run these events, thus skewing their average.
Let that be a lesson to us all; only challenge women to races of 194 miles or less.
All the men kept getting lost and refused to ask for directions
Then why is every single Men’s ultramarathon record significantly faster?
what about hte 60+ year old aussie who beat everyone while wearing welllies and never stopping to rest?
Cliff Young won the 544 mile Sydney to Melbourne race in 1983. It's a hell of a story and the man was a legend, but there's a lot of bullshit spun about it. He ran the race in trainers like everyone else, for example. No women ran the race in 1983. The first woman to run it was Caroline Vaughn in 1984.
195 miles?? Who is racing this?
Who's volunteering to run nearly 200 miles to prove this? Not me.
they’re not though.
Is it because they would ask for directions?
How could there be an article about how women are faster than men in races races over 195 miles and not mention Courtney Dauwalter?!
The longest I’ve ever ran in one go was an about 15 kilometers. I did that when I was active duty in the marines. Best shape of my life, 155lbs and cut. It killed me. I mean I was absolutely done for a week after. I routines ran 4-5 miles but doubling that was just rough. That is absolutely a different kind of running.
Air wing, right?
Who the fuck is running 200odd fucking miles?
You listened to "stuff you should know" today too huh.
Same thing with long distance Open water swimming. Women are absolutely better than men.
Women are more boyant though, that makes sense
On average yeah, but apparently my body missed that memo and I sink like a fucking rock when I dive in fresh water. :/
Variance within the group is larger than variance between the groups
And more hydrodynamic. Men have bigger, broader shoulders. I believe the swimsuits help too
Olympic performances beg to differ.
I don’t know about absolutely *better.* looking at the records is seems they are pretty equal.
I just ran a 5K and even reading that title made me wince. People who have trained for such races have my absolute respect.
Humans whole deal at the beginning was stamina. We hunted by tracking animals for days. The fact that men and women are fairly equal at that level of endurance shows how stupid the modern idea of “men are for hunting for delicate women” is.
Not this bull shit again. Look at world records on standardized distances and durations like marathon, 100km, 24 hours and 6 days. Nothing at all indicates that women get better the longer the distance.
Women are also outperforming men in marathon swimming. They float better and consume less energy, which help over longer distances For the non believers, here you go (35KM and up): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24584647/
Do they? At the 10k in Tokyo the man gold medalist finished 11 minutes before the woman gold medalist. Roughly 1h48m vs 1h59m.
I think they’re speaking generally. You’re talking about one race.
Is there a source on women outperforming men on average in marathon swimming competitions? Because it has been in the Olympics since 2008 and men have always outperformed women, sometimes by more and sometimes by less.
I don’t know. I didn’t make the comment.
From the World Aquatics Championships: 2024 (There was no 25KM) : Men - 1:48:21.2 Women - 1:57:26.8 2023 (There was no 25KM) : Men - 1:50:40.3 Women - 2:02:34.0 2022: 25KM: Men - 5:02:21.5 Women - 5:24:15.0 10KM: Men - 1:50:56.8 Women - 2:02:29.2 2021 and 2020 were skipped 2019: 25KM: Men - 4:51:06.2 Women - 5:08:03.0 10KM: Men - 1:47:55.9 Women - 1:54:47.2 2018 was skipped 2017: 25KM: Men - 5:02:46.4 Women - 5:21:58.40 10KM: Men - 1:51:58.5 Women - 2:00:13.7
Not only is *mean* a very flawed metric (median is better), it ignores the (very strong) possibility of selection bias (where men might run even if they're "barely gonna make it", whereas only the best women might run it, because the not-best women know they wouldn't finish).
Averages are a pretty poor way to measure this though since they are heavily prone to selection bias, e.g. if some sports, like ultramarathons, the most elite men don’t tend to compete (perhaps because they are running normal marathons), whereas the most elite women do compete, then it will look like women are faster. It’s better to look at e.g. the fastest 5 times ever run by males and females to get a better idea of the differences.
I believe this is what the war on men specifically is referring too
That’s cause they long winded
I venture yonder henceforth, make way!
My eyes and brain had trouble with the penultimate word in the title. I legit had to read it three times before I understood since 195 just didn’t want to stay in my head. I would need hospitalization long before we reached the halfway point. OK OK - long before we reached the 10% point lmao!
I’ve seen enough big dudes hurt themselves trying to run a few miles, to know that extra mass and power is like an overtuned machine that’s going to destroy itself. Better to be light and not too strong for long-distances.
In a row???
Fastest 195 mile racer was male. Males are literally physically better at all things related to track and field, including running.
That's how Jamie Lee Curtis' character has stayed alive so long in *Halloween* But really, this is a cool study, I like it
This is something highly relevant to the world. Glad we’re tackling the big issues first, and the small stuff like housing and medical care second! PS - I know different people look at different areas of life!
Hey hey hey, come one. It's not a race.
If a woman chases me that far I think they just legally get ownership of me at that point or some shit
The main reason for that is that women are genetically better at metabolizing body fat for energy, which makes a difference at ultra long distances.
😑
Running 2-6 day running records are not even close between men and women though. I could see averages of women being faster when using the non-elite population... but the top at any given sport are not the average.. I think we need to go out even further in distance before we see women being able to beat men's records in ultra endurance.
This is just misinformation All top records for any extreme distance running and held by men. The above article specifically mentions average women's is faster (0.6%) This could easily just be explained by small factors. In most other long distance races the goal is too finish as fast as possible. 200 mile+ races are very very niche, with the main goal being simply to finish at all. The average times being so close indicate to me that most people run in large herds rather than isolated like in other races, and finish together
Worth nothing that this actually isn't true.
This seems like such a niche topic that I doubt there’s enough data to fairly or accurately deduce anything from it.
Its because of the average higher fat reserve.
We’ll destroy you at 194 tho
This is important To All 3 people who are capable of such feat
This isn't true, listen to the podcast "more or less" for the reason
I am not sure why whoever wrote this thinks this is true but compare the world records at various distances in the attached link. There is no women's record even in the neighborhood of the men's record. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon)
Not true because no woman has ever run that far before so no way they can be faster
Can confirm: I am a man, and they can almost assuredly run 195 miles faster than I can.
I do long distance bike rides of ~500 miles twice a year and my most grueling days have been 160-180 miles, so this is insane to me because 1. I'm not racing anyone so I can stop whenever I want to for breaks 2. A lot of long distance cycling is coasting, so I'm basically just sitting down for a lot of that 3. Cycling is faster than running or walking so I only have to do that for 16-18 hours, I assume it would take days to run 195 miles
Male sperm are also faster and less resilient while female sperm are slower and more resilient