Hacker News Reader

Comment by krstffr | Hacker News Reader

Ultra running is actually one of few sports where men and women are quite close, so I would not agree at all that it's "extremely rare for women to have such good endurance".

EDIT: Added this link for some examples: https://www.runnersworld.com/trail-running/a20803612/why-wom...

View on HN

Not really.

Sierre Zenal was just run and Killian Jornet posted a 2:25. The top woman, someone who'd previously been caught doping, ran a 2:49.

Or take Comrades, probably the most prestigious ultra, an 89K race in South Africa. Men's record is 5:18, women's record is 5:54.

This race was sandwiched between Sierre Zenal and the upcoming Pike's Peak Marathon, most serious ultra runners are doing one or both of those.

Not to take anything from Ellie Pell, great accomplishment winning Green Lakes, but it is not accurate to suggest that men and women are "quite close" in ultra running, despite what that RW article suggests. Just take a look at the times for any major event.

Sierre-Zinal and Pikes Peak are strictly not even ultras, as they are not long enough. Not to take anything away from them, they are both really good races.

I'm not sure that I'd agree that most serious ultra runners are doing one or both of these two. UTMB is next week, and most of the trail world elite will be there. They will all be tapering right now!

Also, Comrades is a road race, and these are very different form the trail ultras - a lot flatter for starters.

I wouldn't be surprised if we get a female outright UTMB winner in the next 10 years - hopefully 5.

What would the times of the median runners look like? Median isn't the right word, but when you look at record times your looking at extreme outliers in a group that are already extreme outliers relative to most of humanity. If we snipped off these statistical outliers does the gap grow or shrink?

50k is not far from a marathon where men are clearly faster when the level of competition is high. its fair to say 7:40 pace for 30 miles is rare for a woman. also rare for a man!

Trail running seems to be different than road running when it comes to gender differences.

What makes Ultra running different? Women are still about 10k behind men for the world record in the one hour circle track (cycling) and their records are behind men in Olympic swimming (where they should have a considerable advantage due to higher average buoyancy/fat cell density).

For most amateur sports, the numbers will be all over the place. But for pro sports or things like marathons with huge number of participants, you're getting the top of the curve. A pro-woman athlete could dominate most of us average peeps (male and female), but when going against career athletes, we're hitting the limits of how we happened to evolve.

Human males are still larger on average than women when it comes to muscle mass, which is the driving factor for a lot of sports. There are mammals where the females are larger than males on average. Somewhere in out universe, such a species could be sentient like us. It's be curious to see how their own culture of sports, societal roles and dominance evolved compared to our own.

edit: Should have read the link in the above article. Women's smaller average size helps a lot on the downhills apparently.

Not that many people do ultra-endurance races, so you're not reliably getting the top of the curve. Variance is high as competitors frequently don't enter (they can't race all the events as they're too demanding) or drop out due to injury/ill fortune. Male muscle mass is not really an advantage in an event wherein the primary goal is to sustain a low effort for a very long time.

Those are a few of my guesses.

Ultra running is a completely different duration than the events you mentioned.

> A pro-woman athlete could dominate most of us average peeps (male and female)

In most sports pro womens’ performance is achievable by trained amateur males, which is why there is controversy around biological males competing as women

> In most sports pro womens’ performance is achievable by trained amateur males

The men's time for a standard marathon is 2:01, vs 2:15 for women. While I wouldn't be surprised if most a lot of amateur men could get to ~3:00 with a lot of work, 2:15 is extremely fast.

One of the theories is women are better able to utilize fat stores for energy. When running, you have a limited amount of glycogen and virtually an unlimited amount of fat stores. When running, your body takes a percentage of glycogen and a percentage of fat for energy. For ultra's, you want that fat percentage to be as high as possible, so you don't run out of glycogen and bonk. The slower you run, the higher the fat percentage. Training at a slow pace helps your body learn to burn more fat and less glycogen. The theory goes that women on average are better able to burn fat for energy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com