Very interesting article about women and running by Rachel Hewitt

[GabrielleNelson]

www.1843magazine.com/features/who-runs-the-world

I'm about as slow as you can be and still be described as running rather than walking, but I found this fascinating. Still a long way to go to get race organisers and equipment manufacturers to recognise and cater for women as well as they do for men. I've been fortunate and not experienced any of the vile sexist abuse she mentions, but I know it's a common experience for women runners.

That's weird. I wonder if it's b/c she lives 'Ooop North'. I never had any of those types of harrassment experiences linked to running.

She's got a lot of challenges what with the prolapse & her desire to be in competitive races. She's really into thinking about women's relationships with space & culture (which sort of topics kind of bore pants off me tbh).

I think there are 2 separate issues- the personal safety one and the race inclusion one. Interestingly i did ultra trail Australia yesterday and the 50k was almost 50/50 men to women. I am left wondering what their secret is- ie if they have quotas on entry but the times would suggest not.

I agree on kit ( although it seems that she is tiny which means she’s probably affected more than most). The race vests with the front bottles are hopeless if you’re a b-cup or more. Apparently, Salomon are bringing out a new women’s one that has the bottles diagonally under your chest.

Last week I was at a sports shop that had more women's XXS sizes than anything else! Sadly too pink for my 11yo son. I think all sizes are out there. It's pretty easy to get kids's lycra clothes for cheap prices now, so XS not too difficult to find imho.

Sorry- I wasn't clear. The clothes are ok (if anything it's bigger female athletes who struggle to find stuff) but I was referring to the packs that you need for ultras, which I called a race vest, hence confusion. They are basically designed for a man's physique and the pocket placement and proportions don't work for women (I cant use the "bottle pockets" at the front because if you have boobs, the bottles just swing around as they're not on a flat surface). You can use the back pocket instead and use a bladder bag but that's a pain in checkpoints and means you can't have 2 different drinks on the go at a time. The packs that are branded "unisex" also really aren't, so I agree with her on that- the proportions are for a man. Also, if you have a really small head, it is hard to get a high quality head torch that fits snugly. I have a "pin head" friend (her words) and she can't use any of the three main brands.

So I think she has a point on the gear but it's exacerbated by the fact that she's smaller than average. Apart from the bottle issue, I can generally get away with men's gear, but I'm 170 and broad shouldered.

She also has point on the cut offs. If they give sex specific GFA times, they should extend that to cut offs although I do accept that cut offs are usually on a "this is how long we're prepared to stand here" basis so they'd be likely to shorten the men's rather than lengthen the women's.

I'm size 8-10 and struggle with items like running belts and have to cinch them in to their maximum and sometimes it's not snug enough. At least my B cups aren't too problematic. Most of my "small" race t-shirts are voluminous and I have several that are ginormous because the race ran out of smalls. Last year I did a 10k in 27oC and very humid conditions with a double steep hill. I thought my 1hr 10 was rather respectable in those conditions, but only XL was left (no medal either) a shame I was left with a saggy knee and elbow length dress as it was a rather nice design.

The biggest annoyance is pre-race toilet queues. A lot of local races are based from a sports stadium. The men's queues barely sneak out of the toilet area. You can barely move around the venue because of the long trails of women queuing. I barely get chance to do the warm-ups because that's the toilet queue time zone.

Cut off times do have the practical element of safely managing road closures and the well being of marshalls in exposed heat/ cold/ wet for many hours and you need sufficient marshalls to provide support. Some races will be more inclusive of slow (female) runners than others, I have no issue with that. As a pretty averagely paced 35-40 year old, in big, charitable races I'm mid-field, at smaller club races, I'm towards the rear, but I'll always check that I have a good margin avaliable. What was wrong was this year's VLM where the 7:30 pacer group was hounded by the clean-up operation and the miscalculation of cleaning up on gun time, not the start time of the final wave who started around the time the professionals were finishing.

The other thing is race numbers are too big to fit between my bust and waist. Where I can, I try to fold the sponsors' logos underneath to reduce the area.