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World-champion mountain biker Rebecca Rusch believes that women aren't remotely close to maxing out their genetic capabilities.
(photo: Josh Glazebrooke/Red Bull Content Pool)
World-champion mountain biker Rebecca Rusch believes that women aren't remotely close to maxing out their genetic capabilities.
World-champion mountain biker Rebecca Rusch believes that women aren't remotely close to maxing out their genetic capabilities. (photo: Josh Glazebrooke/Red Bull Content Pool)

Published: 
The New Icons

The Longer the Race, the Stronger We Get

At the outer edges of endurance sports, something interesting is happening: women are beating men

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Among the world鈥檚 most celebrated long-distance footraces, the is known for being particularly brutal.

The 106-mile course through the French, Swiss, and Italian Alps climbs more than 33,000 feet as it loops around its namesake peak. The weather can be savage鈥攈eavy rain, frigid nights, hot and humid days. In August 2013, Rory Bosio took off from the start line without grand expectations, having never won a major event. She trailed well behind the leaders for the first six hours. But as the race stretched into the evening and most competitors slowed, 颅Bosio held her pace. When the lanky, brown-haired American runner in pink shoes and a blue running skirt crossed the finish line in 22 hours聽37 minutes, she鈥檇 Bosio took seventh place overall, becoming the first woman to crack the top ten at the event and beating dozens of elite pro men.

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It wasn鈥檛 the first time a woman broke through at a major endurance competition. In the early aughts, . Back then her victories were considered anomalous, especially since the next fastest women were more than seven hours behind her. 颅Bosio鈥檚 Mont Blanc race, however, is just one of a recent string of noteworthy female performances. A year earlier, obstacle racer Amelia Boone took second overall at the World鈥檚 Toughest Mudder, a 24-hour championship race during which she covered 90 miles. She finished a full ten miles ahead of the third-place finisher, also a woman.

Last summer, Lael Wilcox became the first woman to win the Trans Am, a 4,300-mile unsupported cycling sufferfest from Oregon to Virginia. She completed the route in just over 18 days after passing Greek rider Steffen Streich in the middle of the final night. (When she caught him, Streich proposed that they ride together to the finish. Her response: 鈥淣o way, it鈥檚 a race.鈥) In in ultramarathons across the country, with 42-year-old race in Texas.

Caroline Boller won the 2016 Brazos Ben 50-mile trail race.
Caroline Boller won the 2016 Brazos Ben 50-mile trail race. (Paul Nelson)

To be clear, female victories in mixed-gender events remain rare. In the marathon, top women 颅finishers are about 15 minutes slower than the top men. But the growing number of standout performances by women in ultra-distance events has athletes, coaches, and researchers believing that 颅women may still be far from achieving their full 颅potential as athletes. The sentiment is buoyed by the simple fact that women have been compet颅ing in 颅endurance sports in large numbers for a 颅rel颅atively short amount of time. The first woman wasn鈥檛 allowed in the Boston Marathon until 1971, seventy-four years after the event was born. Scientific understanding of women athletes is also sorely lacking. Until Bill Clinton signed the , which required most federally funded research to include them, women were excluded from the majority of studies of exercise and biomedicine. Even now there are only a handful of researchers focusing on female athletic performance.

The consensus among scientists is that men have several key over women that make their edge at the elite level insurmountable in all but a few highly specialized sports. But they also concede that we鈥檙e only beginning to understand what women endurance athletes are capable of. A growing pattern of race results suggests that the longer and more arduous the event, the better the chances women have of beating men.


In 1992, UCLA exercise physiologists like the marathon. Twenty years after the enactment of , which barred the exclusion of women from educational programs or activities at schools receiving federal funding, female participation in sports was booming and records were being constantly broken. According to Whipp and Ward, that they were on a clear trajectory to surpass them.

“Women have聽smaller muscles, but their muscles don鈥檛聽tire as quickly.”

The researchers were wrong, and the study was criticized as overly simplistic鈥斅璼tatistical modeling taken to an extreme. But the work called attention to the phenomenal advances of female athletes over the previous two decades. Most of the progress was the . Fewer than 300,000 girls played high school sports before 1972; . In 1972, ; in 2016, more than 12,000 women finished.

Performance improvements have been equally dramatic. n time聽of 2:15:25, set at the 2003 London聽Marathon, is 30 minutes faster than the women鈥檚 record from the mid-1970s. (The men鈥檚 time dropped by only five minutes over the same 颅period.) 颅Women triathletes cut two and a half hours from the fastest 颅female time in 1980, while men have shortened theirs by an hour and a聽half. In professional tennis, the top-ranked women now routinely hit 颅faster serves during matches than some of the men do. The top three 颅women golfers on the LPGA tour outdrive聽lower-ranked pro men.

Across many sports, though, the closing of the gender gap has largely stalled out, with the in cycling, swimming, speed skating, rowing, kayaking, and the marathon. . Over the past decade, the rising popularity of especially punishing mixed-gender contests like 100-mile-plus runs, cross-country-cycling events, and grueling obstacle courses have given women the opportunity to compete directly alongside men, with intriguing results. According to Ultrarunning magazine, between 2000 and 2016, the number of ultramarathon finishers jumped from about 13,000 to more than 88,000, with women increasing from less than a quarter of finishers to more than a third. At the infamous , a woman has been among the top ten at eight of the past nine events, with two women breaking the top ten in both 2015 and 2016. Women have also begun to crack the top 20 at the prestigious , with 听补苍诲 doing the same the year before.

Researchers, meanwhile, suggest that women are going to con颅tinue to improve at a much faster rate than men. According to Sandra Hunter, a professor of exercise science at Milwaukee鈥檚 Marquette University who has spent the past 20 years with an emphasis on athletes, the difference in current participation rates accounts for roughly 34 percent of the gap between men鈥檚 and women鈥檚 race times.

Female athletes are well aware of this kind of data. 鈥湴麓浅颈鸩遭檚 fields are growing fast, and records are falling,鈥 says Rebecca Rusch, 43, a seven-time world-champion mountain biker who has com颅peted against men in endurance events for 25 years. 鈥淲hich just means we haven鈥檛 got anywhere close to maxing out our genetic 颅capabilities yet.鈥


In endurance sports, five phys颅iological factors play a big role in determining athletic 颅potential. Men have definitive advantages in three of them鈥攈eart size, lean muscle mass, and VO2 max (the body鈥檚 ability to 颅deliver oxygen to muscles). But then there are those other two, central drive and movement economy. The former is the rate at which the聽nervous system sends signals to muscles and is critical to maintaining an 颅intense effort over time. The latter is how efficiently the body moves, which is dictated by coordination and joint stability. Both central drive and movement economy can be improved through training, and along with a host of smaller variables, they may have an equalizing effect on male and female athletic potential, especially in endurance sports.

鈥淎ll these guys will go out hot, and hours later I catch them. They always ask, 鈥榃hy do you start so slowly?鈥 And I answer, 鈥榃hy do you finish so slowly?鈥”

A 2012 study by researchers at England鈥檚 Canterbury Christ Church University found that improvements in propelling effi颅ciency of swimmers can account for sizable differences in performance
between athletes who have a similar VO2 max. Earlier work has shown that athletes with lower VO2-max scores can perform at the same speed and intensity of their more genetically gifted rivals in a range of activities by developing superior movement economy.

鈥淧roper form counts way more than many athletes realize,鈥 says Mayo Clinic physiologist Michael Joyner, a renowned expert on health and human performance. 鈥淒epending on the sport, you can often overcome having a smaller engine if you鈥檙e a better driver.鈥

, where small inefficiencies add up over thousands of strokes. So it鈥檚 not surprising that, as Swiss sports scientist Beat Knechtle has pointed out in several published papers, worldwide: the , off Southern California, and New York鈥檚 . (Men are faster in the third, across the English Channel.) Similarly, there鈥檚 no difference between the genders in sport climbing, a discipline that requires precise movements. In 2012, 11-year-old Ashima Shiraishi became the youngest person, male or female, to complete a 5.14c route.

鈥淲hile men are stronger, technical climbing involves a lot more than pure strength,鈥 says 24-year-old Sasha DiGiulian, the 2011 颅female sport-climbing world champion. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of technique and endurance. Women can outperform or at least match men.鈥

Another significant factor is , an exercise-induced reduction in performance. In a review of 颅existing studies published last year in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, Hunter wrote that the available data, though limited, indicates that women are more resistant to muscle 颅fatigue than men during long efforts. In 2004, Hunter conducted a study that measured the fatigability of subjects completing an isometric arm contraction. Women were able to perform a task until failure 颅almost three times longer than men, 23.5 minutes 颅versus 8.5. Hunter says this is due 颅largely to two factors. The first is the 颅difference in muscle properties between the 颅sexes鈥攚omen have a greater number of fatigue-颅resistant fibers, which are utilized during sustained low-颅intensity exercise, while men have faster-颅contracting fibers, which are better for powerful short movements. The second factor is blood flow: men have larger muscles that demand more blood, so their hearts have to work harder.

鈥淲omen have smaller muscles, but their muscles don鈥檛 tire as quickly,鈥 says Hunter. If a man and a woman put the same amount of effort into a long, slow physical task鈥攐ne that mostly involves muscle endurance or is more skill based鈥攖he woman will take longer to fatigue, she adds. Other research indicates that women are faster to recover from physical exertion than men, regardless of the intensity of the effort.

Female endurance athletes also have a metabolic edge, by , when performing moderate-颅intensity aerobic exercise. This is a distinct advantage in longer events, because fat is a slower-burning fuel than carbohydrates. While men must consume calories hourly, if not more frequently鈥攁n action that itself requires more energy than simply metabolizing available fat鈥斅瓀omen can keep trucking along.

What is certain: every day more and more girls and women will play sports. They will continue to close the performance gap with men.聽

Then there鈥檚 the mental game. Here women come out ahead in the key art of race pacing, a trainable skill that men seem to have a harder time refining. According to Danish statistician Jens Jakob Ander颅sen鈥檚 massive marathon study, over the course of a race than males. 鈥淢en may be more likely to adopt a 鈥榬isky鈥 pace where an individual begins the race with a fast early pace (relative to their ability), and this increases their likelihood of slowing later,鈥 Anderson wrote in his analysis. Put another way, the boys blow up.

Rebecca Rusch has seen this play out many times on endurance-颅biking courses. 鈥淎ll these guys will go out hot, and hours later I catch them,鈥 she says. 鈥淭hey always ask, 鈥榃hy do you start so slowly?鈥 And I answer, 鈥榃hy do you finish so slowly?鈥 鈥


While women do appear to have some biological advantages in endurance, those advantages remain poorly understood because of a lack of research. Right now it鈥檚 about what we don鈥檛 know. How do differences between the sexes translate across a range of sports and conditions? There are lots of hypotheses but no conclusions.

Within endurance-sports communities, athletes readily swap baseless theories. Among the most common鈥攗sually put forth by men鈥攊s the idea that the demands of childbirth program 颅women to tolerate the agony of ultra-distance events. There is no research to support this. To date, studies of pain tolerance have asked par颅ticipants to rate pain levels in surveys. Across the board, men claim that they experience less pain than women. Scientists have speculated that the responses may not be meaningful, however, since not to express how much something hurts.

Ultrarunner Rory Bosio has confirmed time and time again what we already know: women can be champions too.
Ultrarunner Rory Bosio has confirmed time and time again what we already know: women can be champions too. (Tim Kemple/The North Face)

Similarly, while , researchers are still trying to under颅stand this dynamic. Studies have shown that hormonal fluctuations can alter metabolism, meaning that women need to fuel differently at different times in their cycle. Other work indicates that there might be an optimal window for competing. In one study, South African scientists found that almost . 颅According to exercise physiologist Stacy Sims, the . That advice undercuts a long-standing practice among some elite athletes of taking drugs before a competition to prevent their period from starting, either to avoid the hassle or because they 颅believe menstruation makes them weaker. Sims says that a lack of understanding has hindered both women鈥檚 performance and scientific studies. In her 2016 book, Roar, the first endurance-training manual written for women, she notes that researchers often don鈥檛 acknowledge how sharp hormonal fluctuations can influence performance data. 鈥淚鈥檓 so tired of seeing women blame themselves for results that were based entirely on their cycles,鈥 she says.

What is certain: every day more and more girls and women will play sports. They will continue to close the performance gap with men. And in those crazy-long races when, many hours in, everything hurts and the guys who went out way too fast are bonking, and the others are stopping every 30 minutes to suck down an energy gel, women will breeze past them on their way to the finish line.

That鈥檚 Rory Bosio鈥檚 plan, anyway. 鈥淲hen I placed in the top ten overall at Mont Blanc, I wasn鈥檛 thinking about my place or winning the race,鈥 she says. 鈥淚 honestly just wanted to finish. It helped me run with a lightness and focus that was all my own. That might be the difference between men and women鈥攖he ability to tune out the noise and just race.鈥

Meaghen聽Brown has beaten hundreds of men since she started racing ultras in 2012.