Are Women Runners Different from Men?

Yes and no. Yes, if you’re asking from the standpoint of “Can they run as fast?” But, more importantly, no, if you mean, “Does running affect women differently?” If the two are equally well-trained, the average woman is going to be slower than the average man, from the 100-meter dash on up to the marathon. Women have certain disadvantages when they compete against men:

• Women have smaller hearts than men, so the heart pumps less blood with each beat. To run a given pace, a woman’s heart rate has to be higher than a man’s. ➤ Women have lower hemoglobin levels than men, so less oxygen is sent to working muscles.
• Women have higher essential body fat stores than men.
• Women’s lower levels of testosterone mean that women have less muscle mass than men.

Working together, these unavoidable physical factors make women, on average, 10 to 12 percent slower than men at all commonly run distances.
So, on the whole, women are always going to be slower than men. I suppose it’s easy for me to say this, but I wouldn’t make that big a deal out of it. Although women are not as fast as men, running has the same effect on both genders. Women have traditionally been discouraged from running as much or as hard as men, but there’s no basis for this practice. Studies have consistently shown that women who train at the same level as men see the same amount of increase in their fitness.
Title IX, which banned gender discrimination in federally funded high school and college sports, was signed into law in 1972. Since then, women’s participation in all sports, including running, has skyrocketed.
Remember that strange phrase, VO2 max? It’s your body’s ability to use oxygen while working and is the most important measure of your cardiovascular fitness. Six months to a year after starting to run, previously sedentary people can expect their VO2 max values to increase by 20 to 30 percent. That’s equally true for women and men. What you probably care about a whole lot more than maximum speed is your running—how to get fitter, how to find the time for it, how to stick with it, and so on. The answers to those questions are the same for all runners. That’s not to say that women runners aren’t going to want answers to questions that we men never to have to think about. The following sections examine some of the most common areas of concern.