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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 sho

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? [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-men-evolved-to-hunt-and-women-evolved-to-gather-is-wrong1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-theory-that-m...

padjo 3y ago
There’s so many things odd about this race that it’s not particularly surprising it doesn’t line up with controlled scientific evidence.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  The more I read about the race the more it sounds like calvinball.
  - xarope 3y ago
    Speaking of which, I'd love to do a calvinball ultra event!
  - ChrisArchitect 3y ago
    Excellent reference.
kalind 3y ago
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. [1] https://worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/road-running/marathon/all/men/senior?page=26 https://worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/road-ru...
- MOARDONGZPLZ 3y ago
  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.
  - uean 3y ago
    Barkley has a time cutoff so I think the point is valid.
  - kalind 3y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon)
    - gcanyon 3y ago
      If you take that 10-15% number seriously, then her finish is a (graded) course record by a healthy margin.
      - votepaunchy 3y ago
        Her 59:58 is 15.2% longer than the course record of 52:03.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- CydeWeys 3y ago
  They're talking distances much longer than marathons even.
- alwaysrunning 3y ago
icegreentea2 3y ago
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.
serial_dev 3y ago
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. [1]: https://www.trailrunnermag.com/people/news/courtney-dauwalter-wins-moab-240/ https://www.trailrunnermag.com/people/news/courtney-dauwalte...
- nasmorn 3y ago
  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
anamax 3y ago
> 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.
- lolc 3y ago
  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.
rconti 3y ago
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!

padjo 3y ago

There’s so many things odd about this race that it’s not particularly surprising it doesn’t line up with controlled scientific evidence.

steveBK123 3y ago
The more I read about the race the more it sounds like calvinball.
- xarope 3y ago
  Speaking of which, I'd love to do a calvinball ultra event!
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago
  Excellent reference.

kalind 3y ago

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. [1] https://worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/road-running/marathon/all/men/senior?page=26 https://worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/road-ru...

MOARDONGZPLZ 3y ago
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.
- uean 3y ago
  Barkley has a time cutoff so I think the point is valid.
- kalind 3y ago
  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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon)
  - gcanyon 3y ago
    If you take that 10-15% number seriously, then her finish is a (graded) course record by a healthy margin.
    - votepaunchy 3y ago
      Her 59:58 is 15.2% longer than the course record of 52:03.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
CydeWeys 3y ago
They're talking distances much longer than marathons even.
alwaysrunning 3y ago

icegreentea2 3y ago

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.

serial_dev 3y ago

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. [1]: https://www.trailrunnermag.com/people/news/courtney-dauwalter-wins-moab-240/ https://www.trailrunnermag.com/people/news/courtney-dauwalte...

nasmorn 3y ago
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

anamax 3y ago

> 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.

lolc 3y ago
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.

rconti 3y ago

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!