Female success in ultra marathons mostly socialisation?

[NitroNine]

The incredible Jasmin Paris^ has set another record.

Before anyone asks, she is indeed a female woman of the original variety; not a mediocre male chancer who discovered an inner feminine feeling just begging to deprive women of sporting opportunities/achievements/sponsorships etc.

Ultra marathons are the area where TRAs like to try to claim that one sport’s outliers mean sex segregation is unnecessary in all sports. Because obviously if women can win there the “biological advantage” thing is all a sham & all other sportswomen are lazy slackers bullying the Stunning & Brave TW.

Of course, it’s been really difficult to study how it is that women do so well in ultra marathons. Women have barely been studied in sport [compared to men]; & the sample size available is tiny. But this FT article^ not only stresses men’s massive biological advantages don’t suddenly vanish; it explains that while women might store glycogen better & their muscles might ^tire less quickly, what’s making the difference is almost certainly female socialisation.

I don’t think any TW have gone in for ultra marathons despite that being the sport where they wouldn’t stand out for beating men. How very strange 🤔 I wonder what it might be about knowing female people enjoy such success (relatively speaking) that could be offputting rather than attractive? A mystery.

^ apologies for Wiki link; & if you’d rather read about her in her own words, she blogs here & is on TwiX
^^ in case of emergency, access archive version here

Not looking to diminish her efforts (at all - she’s amazing) but she’s the first woman to complete this particular endurance event. There were 17 men, IIRC, who’ve done that before her. And she was fifth into the last lap of the event; I’ve not read the article you linked to, but I’m assuming she didn’t make all that time up and finish first this year?

So I’m not sure how her achievement, fantastic as it is, could be used to make a general point about socialisation being ‘the’ barrier to women consistently beating men in sports competitions.

The wonderful Jasmin Paris was the last of the finishers, she came in about 90 seconds before cut-off time.

All ultra-marathon runners are incredible, but even at this sport women rarely beat men.

I don’t really follow your argument here she’s the first woman ever to complete it. She’s awesome and a fantastic inspiration but she definitely “stands out” as an unusual success.

I suspect she finished in time as a result of incredible hard work, grit and determination. What an awesome woman.

From memory research into distance running has shown that the longer the distance the smaller the gap between male and female times.

But congratulations to her for doing this.

Perhaps like bannister and the 4 minute mile she’ll open the way for others now?

The speculative points about possible psychological reasons for women inching forward in these events seemed a bit thin and stereotyping. "It’s knowing when to put a jacket on before your hands get too cold to do your zip up.” That would be why there are no successful male arctic explorers then

It is a really interesting subject and I'm sure lots of interesting research is being done. But I tend to think that the reasons why the gap between men's and women's performance in ultra events is narrower than in shorter events are overwhelmingly biophysical.

The one clearly telling point about socialisation in the article is that male participants are more likely to include what the article calls 'chancers' -- men who have the confidence and sense of entitlement but not the top-level fitness for the event. Whereas women are less likely to compete unless they have relentlessly proved themselves at every stage. The male chancers depress the stats for male competitors, and so put women's stats in a more favourable light.

https://www.irunfar.com/a-love-affair-an-interview-with-jasmin-paris

Some background here.

It's not true that TW don't go in for ultras, I know someone who does, personally, and they are a very good runner. I know of others who do as well but I only know them as friends of friends.

I get the point you are trying to make, but unless you are sure of your facts it just makes you look like a bit of a dick.

Anyway. Back to the point. It's not just TRAs who try and make that point, in general uninformed men do too, to try and resist the work that trail sisters, she races and black trail runners and others are trying to do to get 50% representation of women on start lines.

And you are right I think it's socialisation in that training for long races is a big time commitment, requires full support from your partner if you're married and especially so if you have children. Men can sorta take that for granted but women less so. As well as all the other stuff about safety especially at night, support in long races, pregnancy deferrals,etc etc and race advertising - if you don't see women represented in the pictures then are you going to enter? I'm not sure I would. All that adds up to a picture for women of 'you don't belong here'. It's definitely improving but there's a long way to go.

There's a link to there's women store glycogen in muscles which makes them predisposed to being better over a longer distance/endurance - I'm sure I once read something that it's linked to childbirth......

It's also linked to age. One of the things that make men "stronger" is testosterone, that decreases in men as they age.

Combine women's predisposition for endurance, with lowering testosterone in men and over the age of 50 like for like, things like ultra marathons become more of a level playing field.

I do long distance triathlon, if you look at the difference between the fastest male and fastest female in the age groups over 50 the gap is much smaller than the male and female winners in say the 20-25 age category.

I also think women over a certain age (and to a degree all women) in general are just more stubborn and have more willpower and grit!!

Dr Emma Hilton (evolutionary development scientist, fondofbeetles of this parish) I believe has either researched or looked at the research into this and she says one of the hypotheses to explain women's relative success is that elite marathon women are racing average men - so the standard of actual running ability is closer but the women have the advantage of greater mental strength. They are already winners at the top level, they've already displayed the strength of character you need to just keep going well after it has started to hurt, etc!
But it would be fascinating to see proper research over a number of years with a large and representative sample of both men and women.

Incidentally, and a propos of another pp's remarks, I wonder if childbirth has a positive effect on a female athlete's performance. Just anecdotally, quite a lot of women seem to come back stronger than before having been through what must be quite a dramatic experience. I would love to see research on that as well.

This is often claimed, but I've not found any data (or modelling) to support it (for running at least, swimming is different).

Factors other than strength and speed do play a larger role in ultra distances than shorter distances. However the women's world records are still (as at shorter distances) of order 10% slower than the men's ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon (n.b. Camille Heron's recent 560 miles 6 day isn't listed there as it hasn't yet been ratified, it's
~15% less than Yannis Kouros' 644 mile men's record).

Women are still significantly less likely to take part in long distance races than men. But it seems unlikely to me that the current participation levels are the driving factor in the difference betwen male and female performances. I keep meaning to code up some simple models and do some Monte Carlo simulations to test this hunch.

There's an interesting recent paper on why the myth of male advantage shrinking or reversing at long distances is so persistent, despite being wholly unsupported by evidence.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2024.1360731/full

The Barkley is very much an outlier of an event. In its whole history, there have only been 26 finishes by 20 people in its 30 or so years.

Jasmin is exceptional - she smashed 15 hours off the winter spine race record (whilst still BFing and therefore expressing during breaks) - the man who took the record for that race from her dropped out on the second loop of this year's BM100.

And there are others, such as the exceptional Nicki Spinks - still holds records (all time, not women's) in fell running, though Jasmin smashed her BM100 performance. And Camille Herron who has just taken a major all-comers world record in road endurance races (and tweeted about how she was on her period at the time)

But those who do the BM100 are utter outliers, whether men or women. The man who won the Big Dog Backyard Ultra came 17th in the BM100 - the runner up was the fastest finisher. The big, notorious races such as this are attempted by only a self-selecting few. Because it's not just the strength/fitness, it's the technical skills and the sleep deprivation

People running the toughest ultras are really not representative of the general population. I don't think they are a good start for extrapolations about gender in sport (though 3 times Barkley winner and data scientist in RL John Kelly made an interesting blog post about women in the Barkley - linked to the Jasmin thread)

Remember that ultras start at anything over a marathon. The 50 km/50 mile/100km events are things that a lot of runners aspire to (hell, I've done some of those distances myself).

But once you start looking at the 100 milers or longer, who even attempts them changes completely. And something like the BM100, which is 100 miles without allowing for elevation - which is approx 2x Mt Everest - you're into a very rarefied group.

OTOH, there were some good jokes about transitioning in Tennessee during the interloopals (if you know the event, that'll make sense!)

I am totally a non-expert, but this makes sense to me.. People running in these things are not speeding along, or doing bursts of speed. Women in general are as capable as men of going really far.

With a reduced male advantage, more will come down to having the kind of personality that wants to run an ultramarathon and I don't see that as hugely differernt between men and women either, there are obsessives of both sexes.

Female ultrarunner checking in.

I think there are a number of factors at play here. Firstly (and most importantly, given the timing) Jasmin Paris is a truly phenomenal athlete who has completed something extraordinary. This is much closer to 'first summit of Everest' than mere 'Olympic gold medal' in terms of achievement. If you'd asked me a year ago, I would have said it was impossible for a woman to finish this race.

Secondly, female participation in ultras is significantly less than 50% (and drops off in the harder/longer races). There are lots of theories (little visible representation, non-existant toilet facilities, the way races market themselves, and needing to be comfortable navigating and running solo after dark) but I reckon the big one is simply time. You may be going out 6 or 8 hours on a training run and I suspect it's easier for an average man to free up that time than an average woman. All the "is he a cheeky fucker for wanting to play golf all weekend whilst I do the housework and look after the kids?" threads here are evidence of that.

Incidentally, this makes Jasmin's achievement even more extraordinary - she's a young mum on top of everything.

The flip side of that is that the women who tend to be there really really want to be, whereas plenty of the men are either egos-on-legs doing something to brag about at work (MDS, looking at you...) or aren't fast enough to do well at marathons so default to this. Add to that these races have a small field (a typical race will have a few hundred runners at most, of which only perhaps half a dozen are truly elite) and that the chance of something going wrong goes up exponentially with time racing, meaning that drop out rates are high. Depending on the race 20-50% of those who start won't finish, which just doesn't happen in your average 10k. So it doesn't take many men to have a bad race and drop for a woman to win overall.

But, having said that, it doesn't happen often. The reality is that the front of the field is almost all male, and the further back you are the higher proportion of women there will be. I'll be one of them - I'm not fast. So the male advantage is very definitely there.

I think the one big advantage that women have in these races isn't athletic prowess. It's that they're much less likely to be idiots. There's a bit of a tendency for 20-something men to start out way, way too fast, and end up overheating and vomitting on the side of the trail after six or eight or ten hours racing. Women by and large don't make that mistake.

And, yes, there are transwomen entering as women, with no pushback. And key races - most notably the Highland Fling - stating they are "QIA and non-binary friendly" and that you can enter in whatever damn category you think best represents your inner self. Do I agree with that? No. But there we are.

Running ultra-marathons is such a niche sport so far that there's not much point in separating women from men. If anyone's able to do it (physically and psychologically, and also allowing for personal circumstances) then they might as well all do it together, calling themselves what they want. In fact it's so unusual to do it at all that you could say anyone who runs in these events is conducting an experiment on themselves, to see what human bodies are ultimately capable of. I'd call it somewhat reassuring that women and men are both capable of making a decent showing--that's enough.

This was covered recently by More or less BBC
A lot of what has been said on this thread, when you pull the statistics apart the advantage isn’t really there.

@Motorina

More or less agree with you.

But at the BM100, the runner who finished second this year has a recent road marathon PB of 2.31.something. Which is why I'm wary of extrapolating anything from certain events

I think it's finding the time to get the miles into your legs that matters. And if you look at Jasmin's life story, it's a life-long love of hiking from childhood, being in mountains, sports in the round and only later running. And they all take time; so marrying a fellow ultramarathonner who just 'gets it' - as she did - is also likely to be one of those overall life things that makes a difference.

@AuntieStella agreed. The Barkleys are sufficiently out there that attempting to extrapolate anything beyond some people do extraordinary things is a waste of time.

Jasmin is exceptional - she smashed 15 hours off the winter spine race record

Jasmin is exceptional, however Jack Scott took 10 hours off her Winter Spine race course record this year (and Damian Hall was also inside Jasmin's time).

Camille Herron who has just taken a major all-comers world record in road endurance races

What world record was that? All of the records she set during the recent six day race were women's records, not outright world records.

Agree with what’s been posted so far by Motorina, xxuserxx, AuntieStella, these are points I’ve made before about ultras.

The most important thing is she is the first woman to do it, an actual woman, and no one can ever take that away from her. I have a “friend” who I argued with about the male who was labelled the “first woman” for a cycling ultra who is posting unironically about Paris’s achievement for the same thing🙄.