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It's interesting that boys utterly dominated in all the sprints, but women fared better in the 5k. Something to do with endurance, or experience?
by gkfasdfasdf 5y ago
It's interesting that boys utterly dominated in all the sprints, but women fared better in the 5k. Something to do with endurance, or experience?
- readthenotes1 5y agoThe disparity in lower body strength isn't as great between men and women, and professionals can train much better for distance running than someone still in high school.
- notacoward 5y agoMore to do with age than anything. The boys in this sample are a full 16% slower than world record pace for their sex, while the (slightly older) women are a mere 2% slower for theirs. To me, this suggests that the boys haven't yet finished tuning their bodies and their techniques to maximize running efficiency, which matters more than pure power for 5km and up.
- fivefifty 5y agoExperience/training does seem to matter more as distance increases, distance runners tend to peak older than you'd think. Also for sprinting, height matters somewhat, in particular the longer your legs the better you will be to a certain point. Being short and light tends to be better for quick off the mark acceleration, but after that it's more about having long legs and fast twitch muscle fibres to keep the acceleration and speed going for longer. For distance running having more muscle mass is somewhat of a disadvantage as it means you will likely develop more lactic acid and will probably gas out sooner, it's preferably to be lightweight develop a strong lung capacity/VO2 max so you can run fast for longer. If the boys were taller and relatively muscular, they would naturally have an advantage at sprinting, but over distance wouldn't have as much of a natural advantage. Things like running technique, VO2 max, lactate threshold even just the mental aspects of distance running tend to take longer to develop.