7 ms·

It's great when women win these races, and I wish there were more, but don't get the misperception they are somehow faster in this sport compared to men than in

It's great when women win these races, and I wish there were more, but don't get the misperception they are somehow faster in this sport compared to men than in other sports. It all depends who shows up on the start line. Elite women are faster than nearly all the men, so if an elite woman shows up, but no elite men do, she will likely win. List of ultrarunning records: https://ultrarunning.com/featured/ultrarunning-magazine-all-time-lists/ https://ultrarunning.com/featured/ultrarunning-magazine-all-... Normally awards are for "First Place Male" and First Place Female." Not sure why this race had an award for "overall."

arcturus17 7y ago
Looking at those record tables has me wondering what GP is referring to when they say that barely any difference exists between the sexes...
- IIAOPSW 7y ago
  Normalize it based on the fraction of women in the race to start with maybe?
  - jtbayly 7y ago
    Go for it. Knock yourself out trying to prove there are no differences between the sexes. While you're at it normalize success at giving birth based on the fraction of men to attempt it.
    - peripitea 7y ago
      To be fair, the differences here seem to be smaller than in other sports, suggesting that while testosterone is a factor it may be less than it is in other sports. If 90% of the competitors in these races are male, that would further impact this discrepancy.
      - Godel_unicode 7y ago
        > If 90% of the competitors in these races... Why would that matter? They're not running as a group; if you're the fastest then you win. This isn't a probabilistic thing. Lots of slow men crowding the starting line isn't going to impact who finishes first.
        IIAOPSW 7y ago
        If 90% are men, all else equal, you would expect men to win 90% of the time.
        Godel_unicode 7y ago
        That's quite the leap of logic hiding in that deceptively small "all else equal", what leads you to believe that everyone in a race has an equal chance of winning it?
        IIAOPSW 7y ago
        >what leads you to believe that everyone in a race has an equal chance of winning it? I made no such assumption. If you pull runner speeds from any distribution, and label 90% of those numbers "male" and 10% "female", 90% of the time the highest speed will be labelled "male". Even if you are pulling the female runner speeds from a slightly faster distribution, if most of the people running are men then men will still win most of the time. Failing to normalize by the population sizes at the start of the race is a blatant mathematical error. Until you fix it your argument is flawed and if you don't fix it you're willfully wrong.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        Godel_unicode 7y ago
        > I made no such assumption. You literally wrote "all else equal" in your comment. > pull runner speeds from any distribution Not true. If I pick a distribution of elite women and non-athlete men, all of the top finishers will be women. You're assuming speeds are normally distributed; they are not. Where is this data that you're citing here? It doesn't line up with any data I've seen, nor with my extensive experience in amateur racing. Most races are won by the same small group of elite runners. The size of the field is immaterial as the majority of racers have no chance of winning. Normalizing for population size might make sense if you actually had to beat everyone independently. Fortunately, you're only racing the person in first so everyone else can be safely ignored. Put another way, if Michael Phelps is racing he's going to win. You can only win by beating him, the rest of the field doesn't matter.
- Izkata 7y ago
  To quote them: > at this distance. ~~All the distances in those tables are significantly longer than the 50k this article was about.~~ Edit: Ah, I missed it due to the weird order - but my original point stands, there is no point in ignoring part of someone's comment when trying to rebut them.
  - ward 7y ago
    No? The link geargrinder posted literally also has a 50 kilometer table.
    - Izkata 7y ago
      Erk, I missed it scrolling down (the distances are in a pretty random order)
  - bitexploder 7y ago
    They are still slower... but the gap is a little more narrow. Men will definitely have an edge in shorter distances.
    - gji 7y ago
      Interestingly, the 100m record difference is about 10%, which is roughly the same as the gap in the ultramarathon records (and in the record mile time). So the difference is fairly consistent across distances.
      - peripitea 7y ago
        I don't think it's quite that close -- there may be sample size/participation factors involved here. For example, the top US women seems to be competitive with the top ~10 US men, which in more testosterone-dominant sports would never happen.
  - emptyfile 7y ago
    Do you people have bad eyesight or something. This whole thread is weird.
cameronbrown 7y ago
Nothing to back this up, but my gut instinct is: 1. Men generally tend to be faster than women 2. Women generally tend to be better at long-endurance than men
- geargrinder 7y ago
  All the records actually show men still have the physical advantage at these distances that they do at shorter distances. It would be cool if somehow women were faster in comparison the longer the distance, but the records don't show that to be the case.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    I didn't say faster, I just said more enduring, able to last longer, etc..
    - lazyguy 7y ago
      How does that NOT translate to 'faster' in a endurance race?
      - cameronbrown 7y ago
        Because being initially faster does not mean being able to run faster for the entire race.
        EForEndeavour 7y ago
        This is pedantic, even for HN! Who said anything about being "initially" faster? To win a race, you need to maintain the fastest average speed out of all competitors, plain and simple.
        cameronbrown 7y ago
        Not really, my point was that the typical male, while able to run faster outright, typically will slow down. Professionals of course will know their limits and run at a pace they can keep. The typical woman tends to run slower, but more able to keep a consistent speed and thus could come out in front. But this is for the average case and not the professional case, where men tend to dominate anyway. https://blog.mapmyrun.com/are-women-better-than-men-at-long-distance-running/ https://blog.mapmyrun.com/are-women-better-than-men-at-long-...
new2628 7y ago
Honest question: why do you consider it great when women win these races, as in, is it in some sense worse when men win them?
- geargrinder 7y ago
  Because it does highlight what women are capable of and it is certainly something to celebrate. Also, when it does happen it creates an interesting story which brings more attention to the sport (like this one did).
- neffy 7y ago
  No, it´s better for everybody - the human race wins. Let´s say you had a bunch of computers, and somebody had told you a certain type always ran slowly, so you never used them for anything fast, and even put them on slower connections, because of that. And then one day, you discovered if you connected them up to faster links, they ran faster. You now have a larger number of faster computers. As with computers, so with society, it´s not a zero sum game.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  That women are winning these races, is a credit to this sport. Sports have no intrinsic value that isn't somehow tied to the good they do for humanity. We should judge them by their fruits. Even so, the vast majority of sports are constructed so that, on average, men have big advantages. It could be that it's easier to construct a sport that way. It could also be that constructing a sport that way better appeals to the prejudices of society. After all, there are some sports in which women compete at the highest level. For example, horse racing, open-water swimming, and as we see here "ultra" running. It's not necessary for women to win all or even most of the top prizes, but it's great that they win sometimes. Personally, although I enjoy watching gendered sports like ice hockey and American football I definitely see them as inferior to sports that exhibit more gender equality.
  - jki275 7y ago
    I don’t think anyone “constructed” running. People have been running for millennia.
johnbatch 7y ago
Looking at those dates in the 24 hour and 100 mile. Most of the women records are in the last 5 years, and some of the men’s records are from much longer ago.

arcturus17 7y ago

Looking at those record tables has me wondering what GP is referring to when they say that barely any difference exists between the sexes...

IIAOPSW 7y ago
Normalize it based on the fraction of women in the race to start with maybe?
- jtbayly 7y ago
  Go for it. Knock yourself out trying to prove there are no differences between the sexes. While you're at it normalize success at giving birth based on the fraction of men to attempt it.
  - peripitea 7y ago
    To be fair, the differences here seem to be smaller than in other sports, suggesting that while testosterone is a factor it may be less than it is in other sports. If 90% of the competitors in these races are male, that would further impact this discrepancy.
    - Godel_unicode 7y ago
      > If 90% of the competitors in these races... Why would that matter? They're not running as a group; if you're the fastest then you win. This isn't a probabilistic thing. Lots of slow men crowding the starting line isn't going to impact who finishes first.
      - IIAOPSW 7y ago
        If 90% are men, all else equal, you would expect men to win 90% of the time.
        Godel_unicode 7y ago
        That's quite the leap of logic hiding in that deceptively small "all else equal", what leads you to believe that everyone in a race has an equal chance of winning it?
        IIAOPSW 7y ago
        >what leads you to believe that everyone in a race has an equal chance of winning it? I made no such assumption. If you pull runner speeds from any distribution, and label 90% of those numbers "male" and 10% "female", 90% of the time the highest speed will be labelled "male". Even if you are pulling the female runner speeds from a slightly faster distribution, if most of the people running are men then men will still win most of the time. Failing to normalize by the population sizes at the start of the race is a blatant mathematical error. Until you fix it your argument is flawed and if you don't fix it you're willfully wrong.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        Godel_unicode 7y ago
        > I made no such assumption. You literally wrote "all else equal" in your comment. > pull runner speeds from any distribution Not true. If I pick a distribution of elite women and non-athlete men, all of the top finishers will be women. You're assuming speeds are normally distributed; they are not. Where is this data that you're citing here? It doesn't line up with any data I've seen, nor with my extensive experience in amateur racing. Most races are won by the same small group of elite runners. The size of the field is immaterial as the majority of racers have no chance of winning. Normalizing for population size might make sense if you actually had to beat everyone independently. Fortunately, you're only racing the person in first so everyone else can be safely ignored. Put another way, if Michael Phelps is racing he's going to win. You can only win by beating him, the rest of the field doesn't matter.
Izkata 7y ago
To quote them: > at this distance. ~~All the distances in those tables are significantly longer than the 50k this article was about.~~ Edit: Ah, I missed it due to the weird order - but my original point stands, there is no point in ignoring part of someone's comment when trying to rebut them.
- ward 7y ago
  No? The link geargrinder posted literally also has a 50 kilometer table.
  - Izkata 7y ago
    Erk, I missed it scrolling down (the distances are in a pretty random order)
- bitexploder 7y ago
  They are still slower... but the gap is a little more narrow. Men will definitely have an edge in shorter distances.
  - gji 7y ago
    Interestingly, the 100m record difference is about 10%, which is roughly the same as the gap in the ultramarathon records (and in the record mile time). So the difference is fairly consistent across distances.
    - peripitea 7y ago
      I don't think it's quite that close -- there may be sample size/participation factors involved here. For example, the top US women seems to be competitive with the top ~10 US men, which in more testosterone-dominant sports would never happen.
- emptyfile 7y ago
  Do you people have bad eyesight or something. This whole thread is weird.

cameronbrown 7y ago

Nothing to back this up, but my gut instinct is: 1. Men generally tend to be faster than women 2. Women generally tend to be better at long-endurance than men

geargrinder 7y ago
All the records actually show men still have the physical advantage at these distances that they do at shorter distances. It would be cool if somehow women were faster in comparison the longer the distance, but the records don't show that to be the case.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  I didn't say faster, I just said more enduring, able to last longer, etc..
  - lazyguy 7y ago
    How does that NOT translate to 'faster' in a endurance race?
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      Because being initially faster does not mean being able to run faster for the entire race.
      - EForEndeavour 7y ago
        This is pedantic, even for HN! Who said anything about being "initially" faster? To win a race, you need to maintain the fastest average speed out of all competitors, plain and simple.
        cameronbrown 7y ago
        Not really, my point was that the typical male, while able to run faster outright, typically will slow down. Professionals of course will know their limits and run at a pace they can keep. The typical woman tends to run slower, but more able to keep a consistent speed and thus could come out in front. But this is for the average case and not the professional case, where men tend to dominate anyway. https://blog.mapmyrun.com/are-women-better-than-men-at-long-distance-running/ https://blog.mapmyrun.com/are-women-better-than-men-at-long-...

new2628 7y ago

Honest question: why do you consider it great when women win these races, as in, is it in some sense worse when men win them?

geargrinder 7y ago
Because it does highlight what women are capable of and it is certainly something to celebrate. Also, when it does happen it creates an interesting story which brings more attention to the sport (like this one did).
neffy 7y ago
No, it´s better for everybody - the human race wins. Let´s say you had a bunch of computers, and somebody had told you a certain type always ran slowly, so you never used them for anything fast, and even put them on slower connections, because of that. And then one day, you discovered if you connected them up to faster links, they ran faster. You now have a larger number of faster computers. As with computers, so with society, it´s not a zero sum game.
jessaustin 7y ago
That women are winning these races, is a credit to this sport. Sports have no intrinsic value that isn't somehow tied to the good they do for humanity. We should judge them by their fruits. Even so, the vast majority of sports are constructed so that, on average, men have big advantages. It could be that it's easier to construct a sport that way. It could also be that constructing a sport that way better appeals to the prejudices of society. After all, there are some sports in which women compete at the highest level. For example, horse racing, open-water swimming, and as we see here "ultra" running. It's not necessary for women to win all or even most of the top prizes, but it's great that they win sometimes. Personally, although I enjoy watching gendered sports like ice hockey and American football I definitely see them as inferior to sports that exhibit more gender equality.
- jki275 7y ago
  I don’t think anyone “constructed” running. People have been running for millennia.

johnbatch 7y ago

Looking at those dates in the 24 hour and 100 mile. Most of the women records are in the last 5 years, and some of the men’s records are from much longer ago.