I looked for a study on this and found this here.
It still says that men are faster than women, but if you compensate for that woman are over all more enduring in a Marathon.
The optimal pacing strategy is even splits. You want to leave everything on the course and finish with nothing in the tank (this is the “drop dead” pacing strategy Daniels wrote about in… “Oxygen Power”?). Negative splits means you went out too slow and positive splits means you went out too fast.
What the article shows is that men have larger positive splits which means they had worse performance against a theoretical optimum (even with that they’re still faster). Women were closer to optimal pacing strategy. The article says they don’t know if that’s physiological or tied to strategy and decision making.
Maybe women are just more realistic about their performance and pace appropriately?
I looked for a study on this and found this here. It still says that men are faster than women, but if you compensate for that woman are over all more enduring in a Marathon.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263585668_Men_Are_More_Likely_than_Women_to_Slow_in_the_Marathon
The optimal pacing strategy is even splits. You want to leave everything on the course and finish with nothing in the tank (this is the “drop dead” pacing strategy Daniels wrote about in… “Oxygen Power”?). Negative splits means you went out too slow and positive splits means you went out too fast.
What the article shows is that men have larger positive splits which means they had worse performance against a theoretical optimum (even with that they’re still faster). Women were closer to optimal pacing strategy. The article says they don’t know if that’s physiological or tied to strategy and decision making.
Maybe women are just more realistic about their performance and pace appropriately?