🚀 go-pugleaf

> someone asked:
> Did anyone see the article in the paper recently (UPI, I think)
> about the possibility of women surpassing men in the marathon
> as early as 1998?

Not to start a war of the sexes, but it'll never happen. This sort of
rubbish has been reported on TV too, but the only ones who ever seem
to make such assertions are the grossly misinformed or the self-
delusionary.

> The men in this 21-year period have taken 06:43 off their
> record, while the women have taken off 1:06:39.

The men had been training for and racing marathons for decades in the
early part of this period but the women had never been ALLOWED to run
such long distances in competition. The early women's records merely
reflect inexperience at both training methodologies and racing. Now the
women have the same opportunities for first rate coaching and entry into
marathon competition, so their training loads are now equivalent.

> Can you imagine what's going to happen to those rates in the future?

I certainly can. The rate of change will soon level off.

Dr Owen Anderson wrote an article in "Running Research News", Vol 7, #2
March-April 1991, "The Gender Gap:.." His assessment after reviewing the
research of several US and European physiologists and noting the world
records in all running events, is that the difference between the sexes
in athletic performance is 11% across the board. That data includes the
records for all distances from sprints (where rates of improvement have
not been so dramatic in the past 20 years) all the way to the marathon.

The two basic causes for this difference are, first that women
naturally have more body fat than men and second that men naturally have
a greater amount of hemoglobin per liter of blood. In fact the male
liter of blood carries, on average, 11% more oxygen than female blood.

The only thing no one can yet resolve is why women seem to be as
competitive in ultra-distance running as men. More food for thought?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jack Berkery, Computer Scientist, GE Research, Schenectady NY
  berkery@crd.ge.com  "The Common Sense Coach"