Funny how you stumble into news topics that make you go hhhmmm, two sides to every story right? So what spawned my search on who runs faster, girls or boys? It just so happens two men by the names of Stephen Seiler, and Steven Sailer (already a conundrum) blew me away not with their statistical data rot with exceptions, but with wrinkled wit, of which I found, quite honestly, a bit disrespectful toward the largely growing population of women runners. Steven (Writer and Market Researcher) and Stephen’s (Faculty of Health and Sport, Agder College) article THE GENDER GAP: ELITE WOMEN ARE RUNNING FURTHER BEHIND published in 1997 subheads with this statement:

“The world's fastest women are now getting slower, while the men keep getting faster. That's the outcome of our analysis of top running performances of the last 40 years. Reduced use of anabolic steroids may be the reason women runners are no longer becoming like men.”

Ok, now without getting into a sinking ship of ‘scientific’ lore, I would like to share with you what my research has turned up. In case you are wondering, just because Steven and Stephen wrote this more than ten years ago, NO, it is no excuse for their blatant disregard of the ability of women runners.

First, let us get one thing straight. As women runners age, generally, our finishing times improve where as when men get older their finishing times increase or worsen. This ability within women has been attributed to increased effort over time in direct response to accomplishments and an emotional, spiritual, and physical energy (attributes dramatically enhanced in women as they age).

Now Steven and Stephen’s main point introduces wrinkled data post wide spread use of performance enhancing drugs stating that any and all times set by women runners before, during, and those in the future are merely not worth mentioning or analyzing. So, basically, what we are seeing here are two men of questionable authority telling the world that without the aid of drugs women are more likely than ever to be slower, less than men. One of the many variables they ever so diligently forgot was age, go figure.

With that being said, lets move forward to the now where we find a 50% increase (since the above referenced article appeared in an online Science journal of arguable reputation) in the women runner population, currently approximately 6 million. While the growth of men runners has also increased it has done so much more conservatively.

Ladies, I believe it is time for a new study on who runs faster Dick or Jane? I find the ability to accurately document the use of performance enhancing drugs to be considerably flawed and find that perhaps accounting for concrete evidence such as age and a runner’s career over time would be a more exact determination of the varying abilities in relation to gender.

This year alone their have been numerous accounts of women’s times, in the 35-45 age brackets, vanquishing their younger counterparts, in fact it seems to be NEWS.

 

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Tags: womens running, age, performance enhancing drugs, mens running

Great pic! It seems women are always coming just behind the men in running./ What are the physiological differences that make this so? Posted by: Karen on Oct 13, 2008 at 04:40 PM

For NOw!! Posted by: Sarah on Oct 13, 2008 at 12:56 PM

Yes, it is true, physiologically speaking, men have the ability to run faster...for now ;)! Posted by: Betty on Oct 13, 2008 at 12:44 PM

This is really interesting. I did see a piece on this lat spring with the conundrum over the LA Marathon and the womens' lead times in that race. My understanding of these statistics is that women's abilities in both distance and speed improve as they age - older women are in fact beating younger women. I am really interested in hearing more about this. But the bottom line physiologically is that men run faster than women, but women go the distance much more efficiently than men. We knew that! ;-) Posted by: bmoore on Oct 13, 2008 at 10:42 AM