I’m surprised she is the first women to complete it as I recently read an article in Scientific America [1] that said the new evidence from exercise science shows women are better physiologically suited than men at long distance running.
Because of the science here I wonder if there’s bias or even sexism in selecting who is allowed to run this race. Or is there something unique about this race that contradicts what we now know about long distance running?
Something to consider is that many of the advantages that the article says women have might not be as relevant in the context of "one-off" events (even something smeared over a few days).
One advantage listed pointed was the higher fat stores, and a higher preference to burn fat rather than burn muscle. But modern food and fueling strategies (and this is of course race/event dependent) can also erode that advantage. If you can continuously dump glucose into your system at the right rate, you'll limit your body's need to tap into muscle or fat stores at all. In this race, you can carry whatever you want in your pack during a lap, and every lap you have the opportunity to refuel and pick up more food.
The timescale that this race occurs over probably isn't enough for the recovery advantage to really show, but uh... I've never run an ultra (or a normal marathon...), so I really can't judge.
Finally, the very nature of races (and having a time cut-off) is just soooo different from if endurance hunting for your life style. In a race, burning up all your matches to just barely cross the finish line in time (or at all) is a winning strategy. In real life, burning all your matches to catch an animal on a hunt is -generally- not a winning strategy (if it means that you'll be in recovery and shit at hunting for the next 2 days). If hunting-gathering is your life, your strategies should be built around consistency and risk management. Many of the advantages listed in the article seem like powerful tools for risk management. As your sport (or your metric) better approximates the risk management scenario of "life as a hunter-gatherer" I think you'd expect the female advantage to show more prominently, and maybe eventually dominate.
How could women be better physiologically suited at long distance running than men, when for example there are around 2500[1] men that have a better time than the women's marathon world record at 2:11:53?
Or compare the men's record at UTMB (100 mile race) at 19:37:43 vs the women's record at 22:30:54.
As a former ultra runner who never competed in barely, women traditionally do better downhill, they are lighter, have a smaller stride length (more agile), and Barkley has a lot of downhill. It's a loop also so comparing it to utmb or any race that isn't a loop or onb isn't quite the same. Men do better uphill traditionally where there is more power and lung capacity required, which Barkley has plenty of also. One thing no one has really pointed out is most ultras alow for a pacer after a certain point. This is vital once you start to lose your ability to think. It keeps you from getting lost, keeps you on pace, ensures you drink and eat at the correct times, mentally it gives you someone to keep you motivated, keep you sane, so on. In Barkley you see runners grouping together to compensate for the lack of a pacer but the fifth loop they send each runner out in the opposite direction so they do the final loop solo, when everything is at its worst. For example, in 2022, Karel Sabbe was found asking a trash can for help getting back on course because he thought it was a women, on his fourth loop.
Honestly, I am surprised it hasn't happen prior to this year, minus the fact that there are just so few finishers.
The article isn’t about pure time, it’s about overall endurance over time. Women tend to finish ultramarathons at a higher rate than men, but not typically faster than men.
So to answers the OP's question: the reason she's the first woman to finish isn't necessarily because of bias or sexism, but could rather be simply because of the very challenging time limit, and the fact that the women's world record ultra times are around 10-15% slower than the men's on all distances from 50k up to 6 days (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon)
AIUI the difference between the sexes is less for long distances than it is for shorter, faster events, not that women are faster than men. Therefore the probability of a woman finisher in this race is theoretically not much less than a man finisher.
So it's not surprising that there's not much of a competitive tradition in marathoning that brings as many women into it as men, or that encourages them to train as hard.
It's also true that some peoples' body types seem more naturally suited to it. See Kenya's domination in distance-running events. They have a cultural tradition that celebrates endurance running going back thousands of years. Even if that timeframe is too short to exhibit genuine selection pressure, it still has an effect. Their children have been raised to run.
There is probably no inherent reason why women don't show the same speed or endurance as men, just as there was no actual science behind the widely-held notion that no one could break the four-minute mile. But it will take time to make up for past discouragement and outright discrimination.
We observe the same in ultracycling where Lael Wilcox is among the fastest.
The thing is traditionnally sports have been invented by men with charactetistics/rules that suited men first.
You also have to take into account that in any society influcenced by patriarcal and sexism schemes, it is logical that they ate simply more men participating. The base level of a group always increase with the participation and competitivity within that group.
> The thing is traditionnally sports have been invented by men with charactetistics/rules that suited men first.
Take a look at the history of the concept of marathon; I think your claim is a stretch. Running fast from point A to point B isn't some kind of patriarchal conspiracy.
Also you make two contradictory claims, which one is it?
1) that the sport inherently is sexist in design, so of course women aren't winning
2) that women would be winning if the sport had more women competing
The first claim is that less women are competing because it has been invented by men for men (and only a long time after were women allowed to compete)
which is not contradictory nor opposite to claim 2 that the level of women would increase if there were more women competing.
Look at pro cycling. 25 years ago I was riding in circle around an elite women cyclist as a junior. Now they haven't reached the same level as I had and are still far away from elite men (who are also much more to compete) but they are much closer because there is more money to the sport, more women competing. Now if races were 5to 10 times longer the difference would probably be lower as found in ultracycling events.
If you make something tilted against group X, group X will not look very good in the distribution of performance.
If those people in group X participate at a lower rate as a result, group X will look even worse in the distribution of performance. You'll be selecting the best from a much smaller population.
I do think there's some merit in the argument that many athletic events have been developed to showcase and compare male athletic capability. (Of course, a few are the opposite!)
To the opposite point: the reply says "women are failing cause the event design is biased" and also "women could do perfectly well if not for society making them not play"
Which one is it. If society didn't hold back women, would they win or not? Arg 1 says no, arg 2 says yes.
If the event were fairly constructed, arg 1 says they'd win, arg 2 says they still wouldn't.
So you've identified two possible problems; if the first is true (events are inherently biased) that completely proves that social discrimination is irrelevant (because the event design is so sexist women can never win)
If the second is true (women only lose because society holds them back) then the claim that the events are inherently biased (enough to totally prevent female wins) has to be false because either they can or can't win ex social bias. Qed either claim being true forces the other to be false, the args are contradictory.
EDIT: yes, I may be falsely thinking point-wise rather than distributionally. Both of the factors you mention do push women out further in the distribution of placements
> EDIT: yes, I may be falsely thinking point-wise rather than distributionally. Both of the factors you mention do push women out further in the distribution of placements
Even pointwise they are complementary arguments. When something is biased against you, you are less likely to participate. When less people like you are present in an activity, it's even harder. When there's fewer people like you around, the rules may tilt even farther away from being good for you. These effects all compound and reinforce each other.
Why have you locked off the easy complimentary answers: "women generally are smart enough to know running 100 miles at once isn't that useful" or "women on average have more important things to do". Nobody crows how men also have the largest Warhammer figurine collections and the largest trains sets due to sexism. Women just have different and generally more reasonable interests.
Why would someone trap themselves in an ideology which depends on believing that women are physically equal to men when men are obviously bigger, stronger, more insanely competitive and dedicated to meaningless status games. That's not necessarily a plus.
Also you still haven't really explained why "run X miles from A to B" is a tilted contest. Yet "swim Y miles from France to England" (an event I believe women are somewhat better at than men?) isn't.
> Why have you locked off the easy complimentary answers: "women generally are smart enough to know running 100 miles at once isn't that useful" or "women on average have more important things to do".
I think you've not understood the argument; the difference between women and men narrows as distance increases. Women might even have an advantage on the longest comps if they participated at a greater rate-- that's the topic that started the subthread we're in.
> new evidence from exercise science shows women are better physiologically suited than men at long distance running.
The average doesn't tell you the shape of the distribution matters
Men's distributions on some things are a bit flatter than women's. As a result, the number of men at the endpoints (for those things) can easily exceed the number of women at those endpoints even when the women's average is higher.
This is such an under-appreciated point! Even in a sport where the average female is at an advantage over the average male, the top performers will likely still be male due to the higher variance in the male population.
Well it's just one article, so don't take it too seriously (and, though I just skimmed the article, it is possible that they do have an agenda, so maybe take it even less seriously).
It's quite interesting though that women perform relatively well at ultramarathons: for example no woman has real chance against top men in basketball, baseball, 100 m sprint etc, but in very long ultra marathons women even win sometimes.
I listened to Courtney Dauwalter on JRE (and then on other shows and indie movies), and she won the Moab 240 [1], a race where they run for days.
And I'm not saying that women are better suited than man, and races with 15 attendees aren't scientific studies, I'm just saying that it can be sometimes competitive and it's quite interesting.
Even Courtney wins a stacked ultra outright. 200 milers are just a hobby thing. So at any event there might not be a single world class athlete. Courtney will beat most men on pretty much any distance and most professional runners on anything starting from a 100 miles. She runs into the UTMB top 10 which is insanely strong. To ever win it the drop out rate for the top ten men would need to be 100% since at least 10 men run the race at a pace exceeding hers. Just takes one coming through
I only skimmed the article but a few things jumped out at me that confirmed what I was going to suggest anyway, so let's go with that :)
"Better suited" is not the same thing as faster.
Less cellular and muscular breakdown might mean they're typically able to recover faster and perform better day after day, while not necessarily indicating that faster men's single-event times have some kind of sexism as a root cause.
The article discussed fast twitch vs slow twitch fibers and how men could be more powerful but worse at endurance, but again, what is the limit of endurance? As another reply to this post suggested, modern athletic performance foods might help men overcome what would otherwise be a disadvantage in multi-hour efforts. Of course, those same foods/fuels are likely designed with men in mind in the first place!
Because of the science here I wonder if there’s bias or even sexism in selecting who is allowed to run this race. Or is there something unique about this race that contradicts what we now know about long distance running?
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-m...