> surely there's a price on that?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone
Side effects include increased aggression, risk-taking behaviour, acne, heart disease, and prostrate cancer. Men are basically taking an increased steroid dose all their life.
This article is about ultra marathons which have very low participation of both sexes. Likely we haven’t seen top performance for either sex. However in the marathon, the evidence is exactly opposite. The performance gap is large and widening. Paula Radcliffe has the fastest female time (male-paced) while men have continued to widen the gap to nearly 15 minutes. Even in the ultramarathon, the top times show a massive performance gap between male and female competitors. This effect truly is one of sample size. You see the same effect even in small local 5k races. Yes a fast woman can enter and win an event with a small number of competitors sometimes. These woman are faster than men in the ultramarathon articles are very poorly researched.
Re:When Women Outrun Men
by OscarCunningham on Sunday May 19, 2019 @03:18AM
(#19951927)
> If men evolved to be bigger and stronger, as measured in some peak power output, surely there's a price on that?
Perhaps the price is just that men can't give birth.
Also, the article is mainly about one woman. It mentions that the gap has narrowed but in order to have any meaningful analysis we'd need more stats.
Also, many, many people run marathons. So narrowing gap makes sense due to increased participation rate and better training; men and women aren't that different, on average. The extremes though are where differences truly manifest themselves.