When Women Outrun Men

[geargrinder]

I have seen many women win overall races, at distances from 5k to 200 miles. But what is always left out of these articles is the relative talent and fitness of the entire field. Elite-level women can beat 90% of all men. So if a male in the top 10% doesn't show up to race, elite women can win the overall. This is what is happening in all of these cases. I love to see women win the overall, but even they would say it depends entirely on who shows up on the start line.

[sa46]

> Elite-level women can beat 90% of all men.

I was curious about this so I looked at the percentiles for the Boston Marathon since the data is readily available.

Roughly speaking, the top 1% of women times lines up with top 10% for men so the data backs up your statement. After that, there's a pretty consistent 20% difference.

    %           Male Female
    0.00 02:09 02:21
    0.01 02:38 03:03
    0.10 03:00 03:27
    0.20 03:12 03:37
    0.30 03:22 03:45
    0.40 03:31 03:53
    0.50 03:41 04:00
    0.60 03:51 04:10
    0.70 04:04 04:22
    0.80 04:22 04:39
    0.90 04:50 05:05
    0.99 05:50 05:56
    1.00 07:58 07:19

Kaggle link: https://www.kaggle.com/jschaf/kernel3166aa9b08

[hsitz]

This is what is going on in these races, the best women can sometimes win races where none of the best men are participating. You can easily check this by looking at race results of the women mentioned in the article at ulrasignup.com . They might beat an elite man if the guy bonks and falls apart (which is not all that rare for men or women in ultraruns), but other than that, no, doesn't happen.

I think all of the women mentioned in the article have run at Western States 100, where there are always a decent number of the best men and women (but never as many as want to go, because it's a lottery system with limited spots for elites). It is extremely unlikely a woman will ever win that race. The women's course record (by Ellie Greenwood, one of the women mentioned in the linked article) is 16:47, which is over two hours slower than the men's course record, and in that record-setting run in 2012 she finished the race in 14th place overall. That's an excellent run, even for a male, but she is nowhere near as strong a runner as the best men.

I think all these women are quite aware that they're not at the level of the best men; they're not delusional. It's the media that likes to sensationalize things when they see a woman win a race outright. The media doesn't understand that the fields in these races are wildly uneven; there's a limited number of races where substantial numbers of the best runners show up.

[Fnoord]

Isn't that true for any sport where endurance is more important than elegance or intelligence (such as ballet or chess)? Almost everyone, if not everyone, at the Olympics or world championship is better than you or me in their expert field of sport.

[sdenton4]

The most intriguing 'graf in the article for me was this:

'After scouring the results of nearly 100,000 marathon finishers, Sandra Hunter, a professor of exercise science at Wisconsin’s Marquette University, made an interesting—if not intuitive—find. The more men there are in a race relative to the amount of women, the bigger the performance gap between those genders. “If you had one female for every twenty men, the likelihood that that female is going to be the best . . . compared with the best male in that age group is pretty small,” says Hunter.'

Which suggests it has a lot more to do with the statistics of outliers than anything else. Elite performance is signal (training!) plus noise (daily variation, environmental variance, Athena rooting for you, etc), which can overwhelm the signal on any given day. But each participant is also a random draw on the /signal/ variable as well. Get more people in the event, and you get more draws on the signal variable. Get more people on race day, and you get more chances for outliers on the noise variable.

[Waterluvian]

I've always assumed it's just two normal distributions overlapping. Where the tails reach both ends (it's possible to find men or women being the best and worst). But where the centres are offset by some amount.

[jokoon]

All male and female should compete in the same league, except women can still earn prizes in the female category.

That way we could really see females beat males for example in tennis.

[hashberry]

Here's a related scientific study that gives a possible reason why: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4899381/

> Women have more body fat than men in both elite (Vernillo et al. 2013) and recreational (Hoffman et al. 2010a, b) athletes. In both elite and recreational runners the percentage of body fat is higher in women compared to men (Blaak 2001). It could be argued that fatty tissue may be used as an energy reserve and this could be an advantage for ultra-distances since runners tend to lose body fat during multi-hours running competitions (Karstoft et al. 2013; Schütz et al. 2013). Women might benefit from their higher percentage of body fat since both sexes lose a similar amount of fat during an ultra-endurance performance such as a 100 km ultra-marathon (Knechtle et al. 2010a, b, 2012a, b).

[nordsieck]

> Women might benefit from their higher percentage of body fat since both sexes lose a similar amount of fat during an ultra-endurance performance such as a 100 km ultra-marathon (Knechtle et al. 2010a, b, 2012a, b).

Sounds like BS to me.

Running burns about 100 Calories / mile[0] (62.5 Calories / km).

100 km means 6250 Calories burned.

Fat is 9 Calories per gram, so 6250 Calories is 1.5 lbs (0.694 kg) of fat. Even if the calorie burn rate is way off - say by 50%, there is no way any of those athletes is in danger of running out of body fat.

And that doesn't even count the carb gels and other food runners typically eat on runs.

___

0. https://www.runnersworld.com/nutrition-weight-loss/a20784289...

[Mountain_Skies]

It is my understanding that humans generally are limited to converting about 0.8% of the body fat into usable energy per day. If women generally have more body fat, then they would be able to yield more energy from it before hitting the 0.8% limit (which likely is spread out over the day especially in endurance events). Or there might even be some variance in that 0.8% limit, with women being able to convert a bit more per day than men. This would fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that women have a more difficult time losing weight than men. Certainly would be an interesting possibility to study.

[cm2012]

I've read that historically on Jeju Island in South Korea, women were the breadwinners for the longest time. This was because the most valuable thing peasants could do was dive for shellfish. Women could do it better than men since their level of body fat gave them more protection from the cold, etc.

[GreaterFool]

Sounds reasonable to me. I've been eating keto for a long time and I always feel like I have fat energy reserves to draw on. I wonder if keto-adapted men and women would outperform carb-adapted counterparts in ultra-endurance.

From personal experience there is a difference and it is a big difference.

[j7ake]

On a related note, open water long distance swimming is often a sport where women are at the top.

[stefan_]

Except any walking person has enough body fat to sustain multiple 100 km ultra marathons worth of energy?

[NicoJuicy]

You don't need scientific papers for this.

Just look at the end scores of ultra-marathons.

[bloaf]

I recall reading in an older running book (maybe one of Jeff Galloway's) something along the lines of: because of physiological differences, in theory women may be able to outperform men in ultra-high mileage events. I suspect the author of this piece is overstating the "conventional wisdom" of the running community.

[mpweiher]

Yeah, this (that women have some advantages at longer distances that may prove decisive) has also been something that's been something that's been imparted on me as "conventional wisdom" so long ago that I can't really remember when, so I was also surprised by the author's use of "conventional wisdom" for the opposite claim.

If you look at marathon winners, it's clear that the male advantage of more muscle mass doesn't help here. You want to have as little energy-consuming muscle as you can get away with, and as little total weight to lug around as well.

[chriselles]

It would appear studies have been done on relative body fat % between male and female long distance athletes.

But have they included relative different upper body muscle mass between males and females?

IF upper body muscle mass differential between genders exceeds the same differential for body fat, perhaps it may explain the declining performance gap between genders over distance?

Might male upper body physiology, excess to ultramarathon requirements, become a net negative compared to women’s excess body fat?

A human physics and engineering problem that possibly favours females at extreme distance?

I’ve got data for hundreds of people travelling 80km, but carrying 25kg.

Including female participants.

Different story with the additional weight carried though.

However, we did have 1 truly exceptional/outlier female who once came in 1st place.

Mental resiliency is very much an individual effort.

Having a lot of experience assessing humans in this realm, I don’t see any gender based causal factors.

However, the one human I met who was truly willing to push themselves to the point of true failure was a female. It was the only time I was nervous in my role. But that is strictly anecdotal.

[atomical]

Ultrarunning is such a niche sport. That's why it isn't an olympic sport. There aren't enough people in the sport to make finishes consistent across similar terrain. The winner of the race could be 2 hours ahead of the second place finish.

[analog31]

My spouse has gotten into trail running, and has done a couple of 50k's along with shorter events. This amount of variation is really noticeable. I also have a friend who rides cyclocross, and it's a similar thing. My impression as an outsider is that perhaps as a result of this level of inherent variability, the social atmosphere surrounding these sports at the amateur level is much more laid back.

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[austincheney]

This phenomenon isn’t just confined to extreme distances. It is present during various high caloric stress events. Another example is potentially marathon ruck marching with a heavy backpack and possibly other hand carried gear.

[xchip]

I am a bit tired of this male-female competition.

If you care so much go climbing, you'll see all women doing better than guys. Nobody cryes. Next topic please!

[hjk05]

No... I mean you sure do see the same effect as in running that the 1% top woman beat 90% of the men. But there is absolutely no competition between top 1% men and top 1% woman. Testosterone is one hell of a drug. And for the top trails in the woman’s league you can see guys who aren’t even in the competitive leagues scaling it like it was a kids playground.

[bad_good_guy]

I don't understand your point? Men perform better than women in climbing too.

[_RedPanda]

I doubt that, climbing relies heavily on upper back muscles

[bch]

See too: Lael Wilcox.[0]

[0] https://youtu.be/qqigzj97Vpo

[tlear]

UTMB is probably the most famous Ultra, if you win you will get sponsorship, huge exposure etc. Check the finisher times.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-Trail_du_Mont-Blanc

Spoiler. It is not even remotely close.

[gwern]

Talk about bait and switch.

Headline:

"When Male Runners Lose to Women: Conventional wisdom has long asserted men outperform women in long-distance races. Ultramarathon results prove that assumption wrong"

Actual article: men outperform women in long-distance races, usually but not always winning:

"By the most common perceptions about the biology of strength and endurance, physiology was stacked against St Laurent. On average, her male competitors had bigger hearts, larger lung capacities, and leaner bodies. And most results reflect that: in last year’s marquee Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc TDS, a 145-kilometre mountain race with more than 9,000 metres of elevation gain, the first female to cross the finish line came twenty-third. St Laurent, who placed fifth among women, came sixty-first overall."

[insickness]

> most results reflect that

But sometimes women do win these ultramarathons. You'd never see that at any other distance.

[mcv]

Are you ignoring the entire rest of the article and focusing on just that one line? Go read the rest. It turns out there are race circumstances where women compete on equal footing with men, or may even have a slight edge.