Left: Wait,
are those
jean shorts?
Above: Squad
goals with
Sophie Power
Below:
Throwing shade
in the Sahara120 | JULY 2019 Women’s Health
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race in 2015, I remember hearing at the
starting line that women were more likely
to finish the race. The only reason I could
think of was that men signed up without
having done enough training. I think
women will only sign up when they know
they’ve done enough training and looked
after themselves in the run-up.’
Self-care is vital. En route, competitors
have to feed themselves, stay hydrated and
monitor their body temperature to ensure it
doesn’t spike or fall too low, all while tending
to endurance admin, like changing their head
torch and GPS batteries. An easy ask when
you’re operating at full capacity that’s surely
so much harder when you’re sleep-deprived
and running on empty. ‘It’s a different ball
game to short races,’ says Jasmin, who also
had the added task of expressing breast milk
for her daughter. ‘I was trying to eat with
one hand and express with the other. I had
everything I needed to do written down
because when you get tired you can forget
things. You have to be organised.’ Like
Jasmin, Sophie’s feat of endurance was
also a testament to her ability to multitask.
‘Cormac usually feeds every three hours, and
it took me 16 hours to get to Courmayeur
where he could first meet me, so I was hand-
expressing everywhere I could en route,’ she
recalls. As a new mother, she also concedes
that she was probably the most prepared of
all the competitors for the sleep-deprivation;
she had a total of 20 minutes’ sleep over the
course of two nights. A study published in
the journal BMC Psychology found that
women outperformed men when asked to
switch rapidly between tasks. In a scenario
where multitasking is the difference
between bailing and finishing, this could
be giving women another edge.MENTAL STEALTH
In a fitness challenge like ultrarunning, psychological
strength is just as important, if not more so, than your
legs and lungs. And the greater the mileage, the greater
the mental fight. ‘The longer you go, the more it becomes
a mental game,’ says Andersen. ‘And when the mental
aspect matters more, women seem to perform better
than men.’ While there’s scant research into gender
differences in mental resilience in the context of sport,
a 2018 study published in the journal Proceedings Of The
National Academy Of Sciences concluded that women
have a survival advantage that’s rooted in their biology.
Scientists at Duke University in North Carolina set
out to measure the impact of famine, disease and other
hardships on mortality rates over the last 250 years.
They found that under extremely harsh conditions,
females survive better than males, even as infants when
behaviour and social differences are minimal. While no
one would compare a decision to enter a fitness
challenge with a hardship like a famine, it’s research that
adds weight to Andersen’s theory that women are better
mentally equipped for a psychological feat like this.
Given the evidence, you’d think we would be entering
endurance challenges in our thousands. And yet, womenare hugely underrepresented
in ultramarathons, accounting
for just 10% to 15% of Spine
Race participants, for example.
Shawn Bearden, professor of
exercise physiology at Idaho
State University, points to
the disconnect between the
reality and the perception of
ultrarunning. ‘There’s a conflict
between our deeply rooted
biases that men are better when
things get physically harder and
the reality that races of this
nature require mastery beyond
physical fitness,’ he explains.
‘If we can make more people
aware of what finishing these
races really entails, then
perhaps more women will start
to put themselves forward.’The achievements of
ultramarathon runners like
Jasmin and Sophie are already
shifting perceptions, whether
that’s outperforming others at
the extremes of endurance or
taking the idea of motherhood
and running with it, but they’re
loathe to count themselves as
heroes, sporting or otherwise.
‘I’m definitely no superwoman,’
says Jasmin. ‘There are a lot
of people who could do this if
they just gave it a go. Don’t start
too fast. If you keep eating and
moving forwards slowly, you’ll
find you can go a lot further
than you think.’‘When the mental aspect matters
more, women outperform men’