Are Men and Women Ever Racing Each Other?

Recently, I’ve had two conversations on the podcast which got me thinking about the extent to which men and women are capable of competing against one another in ultrarunning.

In episode 51, I spoke to Anna Troup following her epic ‘two for two’ at Race Across Scotland and the Summer Spine, the latter of which she won overall, finishing ahead of the men’s winner. As is often the case when a woman runs the fastest overall time in a race, media coverage of Anna’s achievement tended to focus on how she performed in relation to the men, rather than celebrating her performance for its own sake or shining a light on the women’s race.

This is understandable from a clickbait point of view. “Woman beats all the men” is an eye-catching headline. But I’ve always been of the opinion that it is both misrepresentative and, frankly, a little sexist.

Misrepresentative because, in the majority of cases, a woman beating all the men is typically the result of a relatively non-competitive men’s field. To put it somewhat glibly: the strongest women can outperform most men, but the strongest men will usually be faster than all the women.

When I asked Anna about this, she seemed to agree. “The bottom line is, we know from a physiological perspective that ultimately, the top man and the top woman, there’ll be roughly a 10% difference across any distance,” she said. “That’s just genetics.”

A case in point: Courtney Duwaulter. There is a reason Courtney won the 2017 Moab 240 by over ten hours. Well, two reasons: firstly, she is a freak of nature - no woman has come close to her time since. But, secondly, Moab in 2017 was a tiny, obscure race on the fringe of the sport with basically no other elite runners taking part. When Courtney won UTMB in 2023 - a much more competitive, stacked race - 24 men ran it faster than her. In other years, she has finished inside the top ten overall. But, despite being the absolute GOAT of mountain ultra-trail, she has never beaten all the men.

None of this detracts from her incredible athleticism. Far from it: her performances deserve to be celebrated in and of themselves, regardless of how she performed relative to the men. Which is why I always thought that headlines focusing on women beating all the men are both misrepresentative and sexist, inadvertently implying that it is men’s performances against which women’s athletic endeavours should be measured.

“In terms of racing the men, I’m honestly not really thinking about that - they’re doing their thing, I’m doing my thing. It was brilliant to win it outright… but equally, there’s always going to be people saying, ‘Oh, the top men aren’t there'… So you can’t win either way.”
- Anna Troup, Feet First #51

The second conversation I had on the podcast, however, shook up this perspective. In episode 54, I spoke to Holly Wootten following her course-record-setting win at the Dragon’s Back, the iconic six-day stage race across Wales. Holly finished in 50 hours and 46 minutes, slicing three hours off the previous women’s course record set by Lisa Watson in 2022. She was also second overall, finishing two hours behind men’s winner David Parrish.

I had expected Holly to have a similar perspective to Anna when it came to the question of racing the men, i.e. that she wasn’t racing them at all. But I was wrong. “There’s a bunch of races I’ve done in the lakes where the competition that’s there will be the men,” she told me. “Rather than just going out on my own, I’m like, ‘No, I’m competing against them,’ and I value where I come in amongst all that.”

For Holly, it seems, being able to rival the top men in some races is not just a ‘nice-to-have’ that sits separately to her performance in the women’s race. It’s a central motivation that she tapped into extensively to push her through the gruelling ordeal that is Dragon’s Back. Indeed, it was only last two days of the race that she accepted she was not going to be able to catch David Parrish.

Context here is important. Like the Spine, Dragon’s Back presents a unique opportunity for women to compete against men. First of all, it is very, very long, which does seem to level the playing field somewhat, reducing the extent to which raw speed is an advantage and allowing psychological and physiological endurance come to the fore. Also, perhaps more significantly, there are long stretches on the Dragon’s Back where participants can deviate from the standard GPX route and choose their own line.

Holly used this to her advantage, really doing her homework to work out the best possible route for her. (She even ran the event in 2023 purely to get an understanding of it so that she could run competitively 2025!) There were times in the race where Holly was behind the lead men, but charted a more direct route and managed to make up time on them.

Add on top of this the stop/start nature of a multi-stage race, and she found herself with a whole toolbox of psychological tricks that she could make use of. “I got to do all the tactics that the guys talk about,” she said. “Like, when are you going to set off? Are you going to let them go ahead? Are you going to start early, try and hide? Are you really thinking about your lines? Are you being careful with what you’re saying to people? Really playing the game throughout the week. I really wanted that.”

Holly’s perspective calls into question the validity of a strict, regimented view on such matters. It highlights the difference between the race on paper, as displayed in results tables and raw data, and the actual race that’s taking place on the ground, with all of its humanity and blurry, messy psychology. “For David [Parrish], there was a point where I was less than an hour behind him, and the other guys were three hours back,” Holly said. “He was working out when he was setting off each morning based off of me, not based off the other guys. At that point it’s like, what race is going on here?”

What race is going on here, indeed? This got me thinking about my own experiences. Who amongst us - male or female - can claim that, during a race, when they spot a runner of the opposite sex up ahead on the trail (or closing in on them from behind), they truly do not pay attention, due to the fact that they’re “not competing”? That getting pipped at the line by a runner of the opposite sex has no meaning whatsoever? Whether or not it’s strictly ‘correct’, we feel it - the pull of competition, however slight.

When I ran North Downs Way 50 this year, I was pleased enough to sneak into the top ten, finishing 9th overall. About 50 minutes ahead of me, Fi Pascall finished in fifth.

Except, of course, she didn’t - she won, and broke the course record in the process. Nobody would ever look at her achievement at that race and say she came fifth. Yet for some reason I intuitively refer to my own ranking as ninth, even though I was actually the eighth man.

My conversations with Anna and Holly made it apparent to me that this is not a clear-cut subject. It varies on a race-by-race basis, and even athlete to athlete. Perhaps Holly put it best: “Some people say you need to be comparing women to women, and looking at the women’s race. I get that. But, also, we should be asking the women themselves - who are you competing against?”

Cover picture credit: No Limits Photography