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Comment by aphextim | Hacker News Reader

From what I've observed running those ultras are just as much of a mental task as they are physical. Granted you need to be in extreme physical shape to do one of these. I feel that if you were to take a bunch of people that are physically capable and enter them, those with the mental fortitude are going to be the ones coming out on top and/or finishing.

I am wondering if this is part of the reason why women are able to compete just as well as men on equal footing.

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Nothing against women but they are not able to "compete just as well as men on equal footing" in ultras. Her time of 3:58 is more than an hour behind the men's record, suggesting the men's competition at this race was not strong.

At the shortest distance, 100 meters, Flojo still has the world record at 10.5 seconds, a full second behind Usain Bolt's 9.5. Whether long or short races, women cannot physically compete with men.

In the ultra world Sierre Zenal was just recently run where Killian Jornet set a new course record, and Pike's Peak Marathon is in a few days. Most of the serious ultra runners are doing those events, not this one.

That being said, very cool for her.

Sierre Zinal is a pretty short race - it's only 31km. Serious ultra runners run a variety of distances, including the very long ones such as the UTMB (160km) and the Tor des Geants (340km).

Earlier this year Jasmine Parris won the Spine race (the UK's best known very long ultra: 400km along the Pennine Way in January). Not only did she break the overall course record by 12hrs, she also beat the previous year's winner (Eugeni Sole), who was evacuated off the last hill, 6km from the end, while in 2nd place.

Allez les filles!

Steve (edit: spelling)

A BBC article about Paris:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-4...

"Mrs Paris did the race during a week-long break from writing her PhD thesis"

I'd love to see her reaction to a naive reporter asking, "Congrats on your record finish. So, are you going to be taking some vacation before your next race?"

> Whether long or short races, women cannot physically compete with men.

[Citation really seriously needed]

Edit Haha, love the downvotes for asking for evidence for an unsubstantiated claim.

The fact that there is a separate trophy which only women compete for, is a pretty good indicator that its generally true. Why else would a female trophy exist?

Historical preponderance of male competitors is an easy explanation off the top of my head.

For an obvious example, Katherine Switzer, who entered the Boston Marathon in 1967 and got chased down for gasp being a woman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOGXvBAmTsY

Organized races in America were predominantly white in the early days and yet when other ethnicities started to join (in small numbers at first) no special trophy was needed. They were able to compete immediately for the overall trophy just like all the other men.

Historical exclusion from competition doesn't make sense as a reason for modern under performance.

Did you watch the video I linked about how women were explicitly discouraged/banned from entering long-distance running? The now infamous image is from 1967.

How is that the least bit relevant? I'm not arguing about the quantity of female victors historically (which obviously is affected by their unfortunate exclusion)

I'm talking about races today where women must compete for a Woman's-trophy because they are generally not able to compete with the male athletes. That is exactly the reason for having a Woman's trophy in the first place. Which is how this sub-discussion started.

Even though black runners were excluded from early races, there was no need to create a special trophy for them. When the ugly practice of excluding them ended, they tended to dominate.

My point is the very existence of a Woman's trophy is an admission that, generally speaking, they can not compete on equal footing with men. Obviously there are fun exceptions like in this story where a woman wins the overall race, and all credit to her for doing so.

I think it might be because most everyone here understands that human sexual dimorphism is a thing, and it's unrelated to personal politics. If you need evidence, check literally every single track and field record on the books. Show a counter example, and people here might be more willing to entertain your snark.

You're literally commenting on a counter example.

Read that again - I didn't say a single outcome in a single race, I said records.

You said, "show a counter example". You really need to work on your phrasing if you were referring to records.

It's clear you're being intentionally intransigent here. If you're willing to have a discussion about the facts, as opposed to your inability to comprehend simple sentences, then I'm game. Otherwise, please take your axe and grind it elsewhere.

My only axe is with people who make sweeping claims without evidence.

Says the person who, when confronted with objective evidence that defeats his argument, refuses to accept it.

Male elites do not run every single ultra race out there, obviously. Why should they? A course record is not a world record, and there is not a single world record a woman holds over a man in running at any distance, from 100 meters to 100 miles.

Your refusal to admit the obvious makes you seem like you're just trolling people in this thread.

I just quoted the 100m and the 50K records but feel free to compare all distance records for men and women: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_athle...

Seeing a fair few female names in the ultramarathon category. Again, keen on evidence for "women cannot physically compete".

Here's a list of ultras: https://ultrarunning.com/featured/ultrarunning-magazine-all-...

As others have stated, elite women can best nearly all hobby jogging men. But they can't compete with top ultra runners like Jim Walmsley or Killian Jornet.

So if you define "competing" as "having a legit chance to win" then no, elite women cannot outrace elite men.

But always cool and good to see a woman win overall, hope it helps publicize the sport more. The fact that it has people here on HN talking is a good sign.

Are you looking under the women's table? Can you provide a _single_ point where a world running record is held by a woman? You're really sticking your neck out on this point and I'm curious if you actually have a counter example or are just stirring the pot for personal reasons.

Look, I am all for empowering women and as far as personal politics goes, I think we're on the same page. However, nobody is doing anyone any favors by wishing away biological differences present in sapiens, and many other species too[1]. This is a stone fact of our biology, it's up to us what we do with it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_dimorphism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon#Record_holders

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edit_Bérces https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frith_van_der_Merwe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Nurgalieva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olesya_Nurgalieva https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Herron

I'm wondering about your personal reasons also.

These are all one-off races that can't be compared against global records. I currently hold the record for "sitting at luma's desk and typing things", that doesn't mean I'm a world record holder. Take a look at sanctioned events that pull in world-class competitors (which was what the original link pointed to).

Boy howdy those goal posts keep on moving huh.

> I'm wondering about your personal reasons also.

That's an ad hominem for something you clearly did not properly check yourself.

- "Edit Berces, 24 hour treadmill world record holder; holds several Hungarian records". She actually had the overall when she got it, broken by men since then. (http://www.recordholders.org/en/list/treadmill.html)

- "Frith van der Merwe, set Comrades Marathon records for both directions". Female records. When she ran the 5:54 down record in 1989, the men's record was at 5:24 from three years before. When she ran the 6:32 up record, the men's record was at 5:27 from two years before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comrades_Marathon#Winners_and_...

- "Elena Nurgalieva and her sister Olesya Nurgalieva have won a total of 10 Comrades Marathon titles between them; Elena holds the uphill course record (6:09:24)." They both won the _female_ editions. The lead man finished 30+ minutes ahead of them. The record is a female record (see previous).

- "Camille Herron, first ultra athlete to win 2 World titles in the same year (2015- 50K and 100K); 2017 Comrades Marathon Champion; holds the World Best for 50 Miles (5:38:41), 100 Mile Road and Trail World Record (12:42:40), 12 Hour World Record (149.193 km, 92.66 Miles), 100 Mile Track World Record (13:25:00), and 24 Hour World Record (262.193 km, 162.919 Miles)[22]". Women's world titles. Women Comrades Marathon Champion. Women's World Bests. Just scroll up in the wikipedia page you linked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon#IAU_World_Best_P...

What you linked is a list of very impressive ultrarunners, male or female. The women you then linked from that list _are_ incredibly impressive runners in their own right. They would beat nearly any man that shows up. They are still outcompeted by their elite male equivalents though and it is not even close.

I wonder how long that will last, when people chemically "optimize" their bodies for winning. At some point, wouldn't the genetic advantage men have be lost among the testosterone supplements?

Men can take the same testosterone supplements as women, so men will continue to win this arms race.

It would be interesting to see what the androgen receptor density is between males and females; if by some weird quirk, the receptor density is higher in females, then "doping" with anabolic steroids could theoretically be more effective for women. But at that point you are blurring the line and violating almost all principles of fair sport.

Note, there is one sport where doping is essentially permitted, and that is professional bodybuilding. And we have yet to see women with bigger, denser, thicker muscles than men. So I think even with unlimited doping, men still have some kind of innate advantage.

A healthy woman have 10 percentage points more body fat than an equally healthy man, and it isn't not available energy since the body will go into starvation mode as she gets close to 10% body fat.

In essence this means that women carry 10% dead weight throughout their whole life, not a big deal in daily life but in competitions it will slow you down by about 10% given that everything else is equal.

Definitely

Running with some intensity is tiring, even if the pace is slow enough, also I think marathoners manage to deplete their glycogen supplies in the race

However, focusing on running for the entire time is something I personally (and I guess a lot of people) wouldn't be able to do.

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