In bicycling races of 400 to 500 miles, women equal men, and in ultra-distance swimming races, they surpass men by 14 percent. In the Ironman Triathlon, males generally surpass females by 10 percent except in the last event - the marathon - where the difference is just 7 percent. An equally large number of ultra performances reveal a gap slightly less than 10 percent. 4:28 for the average male - a difference of 10 percent. In one review of 92,000 marathon performances, the average female ran 4:54 vs. Photo: Joe Amon/The Denver Post via Getty Images First, a few important stats Ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter on Lookout Mountain in Golden, Colorado. ultra running stars Camille Herron and Michael Wardian. Below is a summary of Tiller’s findings, along with additional comments from him, and U.S. Tiller’s not primarily interested in the stats he strives for a balanced view of the potential physiological mechanisms. In a new research review in Sports Medicine, Nicholas Tiller, a physiology researcher and ultra runner at UCLA, takes the deepest dive yet into the subject with a paper that’s 21 pages long and includes 217 references.

Also, on occasion, a woman does beat all the men and win an ultra race as Courtney Dauwalter did last fall in the Backyard Ultra. Still, the debate continues because it’s fascinating and may have some physiological explanations behind it. In 2021, the world records stand almost exactly 10 percent apart (2:01:39 vs 2:14:04), right where they were in 1990, and right where they are in the Backyard Ultra. In 1992, Nature magazine, a leading scientific journal, even carried a letter from two esteemed physiologists predicting that women would catch and surpass men in the marathon by 1999. A few experts began speculating that women would eventually outpace men. Remember it.įlash back a few decades: In the mid-1970s, when women started running marathons more regularly, it soon became apparent that some were very good at the 26.2-mile distance - and even ultra distances. Comparing the two performances, Sabbe beats Dauwalter by almost exactly 10 percent. female endurance.Įxcept that male runner Karel Sabbe was still going strong in a sister event in Antwerp, and he eventually logged 312.5 miles. It seemed a giant leap for womankind in the long debate over male vs.

Over almost three days, she covered 283.33 miles to beat all the men.

Last October, Courtney Dauwalter won the Big’s Backyard Ultra in Bell Buckle, Tenn., tying the course record.

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