• Murvel@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    Mounting evidence from exercise science indicates that women are physiologically better suited than men to endurance efforts such as running marathons.

    Looking at marathon athletic records; that’s not at all true and took me about 3 min to verify. In fact, out of all the top 25 record times, all are by men (and almost all Kenyan and Ethiopian men).

    What is this tripe? They could at least try to be serious…

    • GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      your are connecting two different pieces of data. The speed that a person can run a marathon vs. the ability to run a marathon.

      What they are stating is that women are better able to run that distance not that they are faster at running that distance than men.

      • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        A marathon is not a speed race. It is a 42 km endurance race, similar to endurance hunters would have done on, say, the plains of Africa.

        The vast majority of people today would be unable to finish even a half marathon without collapsing due to utter and complete exhaustion.

        • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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          2 months ago

          Speed is less of a factor than endurance in a persistence-hunting scenario where we’re much slower than our prey anyway.

          I don’t know the facts for this specific claim, but the logic is fair. One group can be better suited for endurance without being faster. One group could also be faster on average without having the individual fastest performers. Not only because of cultural factors, but also because the distribution curves might have different shapes for men vs women. There could be greater outliers (top performers) among men even if the average is higher among women in general. It’s not necessarily as straightforward as, say, height, where men’s distribution curve is almost the same shape as women’s, just shifted up a few inches.

          I don’t have the data to draw any real conclusions, though.

          One of the problems looking at athletic records is that it’s really just the elite among a self-selected group of enthusiasts, which doesn’t tell us a whole lot about what might have been the norm 100,000 years ago, or what might be the norm today if all else were equal between genders. These are not controlled trials.

          I’ve read that the top women outperform the top men in long-distance open-water swimming, supposedly due in part to higher body fat making women more buoyant, helping to regulate body temperature, and providing fuel. This is the first time I’ve read that women might have an advantage in running, though.

          I wish the article provided citations. The reality is probably too complex to fit into a headline or pop-sci writeup.

          • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            Women have a higher pain threshold, and may be able to handle long distance endurance better. However, judging by existing tribal groups in Africa who still practice endurance hunting, that really isn’t the case so it’s probably bullshit.

          • Murvel@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            I just looked at the measured data and came to a conclusion. I don’t even know what conclusion you’re trying to communicate, but it beats me…

              • Murvel@lemm.ee
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                2 months ago

                I was asking the commenter to explain what a ‘better’ runner is supposed to mean? And tou perhaps was answering something else…

                • dragonflyteaparty@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  Better doesn’t always equal faster.

                  Better can equal going further.

                  Better can equal being more efficient.

                  Efficient means using less calories to do the same thing.

                  • Murvel@lemm.ee
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                    2 months ago

                    Sure. But you then need to show the data that supports those points

        • GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          From what I’ve researched in the past ( I don’t have time to look it up) is that due to fact that women naturally hold more body fat than men that they then have more energy to use on endurance runs. That while they are not faster than men due to smaller muscles they can move for longer periods of time due to having more fat energy.

          I could be wrong it happens often with me.

          • Murvel@lemm.ee
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            2 months ago

            That may be, who knows (without supprting evidence)? But see, things is, I don’t think hearsay is what a good article in Scientific American should be based on.

            • TacoNot@mander.xyz
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              2 months ago

              If you read the article that was posted, you will see that it confirms what they just stated.

              • Murvel@lemm.ee
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                2 months ago

                Nowhere does it definitely state that’s the case. In fact, the data doesn’t even support that claim since women should excel at ultra marathons, but they don’t. In fact, women don’t excel in any running exercise that I can find.

    • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.netOP
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      2 months ago

      I agree that they overstated their point there. But regardless, I think it’s fair to say that any differences between men and women in these sports are fairly small, so I don’t think it changes the overall conclusion.

      • dank@lemmy.today
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        2 months ago

        The men’s world record marathon time is 9% faster than the women’s. That’s significant. The male runner would finish over two miles ahead of the female runner.

        • flerp@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          Women were first allowed to compete in marathons in 1972. In 1972 the men’s record was 2:10:30. The current record is 2:00:35 which is about an 8% difference. Pretty close to the difference between men and women currently.

          The first women’s record was 3:40:22 and the current women’s record is 2:11:53.11 which is 40% faster.

          Once funding for women’s athletics reaches parity and once girls are encouraged into athletics as much as boys, then we will see if the ladies catch up. So far they’re doing a pretty good job catching up, and you can’t look at one current window in time and say you have the answer, you need to look at trends.

          • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            And that’s what people miss when quoting sports statistics. They confuse culture with biology. We live in a society that imparts certain roles based on gender. Men are encouraged to exercise and run more from a young age than women are. In an egalitarian society, that disparity wouldn’t exist. We really can’t say how things would play out. That’s why studies of paleolithic skeletons are a much better tool than just navel-gazing based on modern sports. Those statistics cannot be separated from our current society. Instead of just speculating, we can look at the actual skeletons of paleolithic people, which this article discusses. These skeletons record a record of the kinds of lives these people lived. There’s no need to speculate; we can ask these people directly how they lived.

        • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.netOP
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          2 months ago

          I wouldn’t consider 9% to be that large in this context. Certainly a difference that would be overshadowed by individual variation.

          Even if we assume women are physiologically 9% slower at persistence hunting (which that statistic is far from proving) it still suggests they could and likely were successful at it, albeit maybe not the very best.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          How many marathons are run in a weaving path on uneven ground full of underbrush while trying to keep up with an animal that could potentially go in any direction at any time in the hopes that it will get tired before you do?

          Because otherwise this marathon measurement is silly.