Not So Superior After All
Men like to think they are the stronger sex , but when it comes to ultra-running and pacing at Comrades , this is the definitive proof that women are in fact far superior beings ! What is especially significant is comparing the seeding batches . Excluding the charity ( CC ) and Green Number ( E ) batches , runners in each batch have qualified for Comrades with a similar marathon time , and are therefore of similar ability . This enables us to compare like for like – for example , the average D batch man should finish in a similar time to a D batch woman .
Having said that , men do have a slight advantage in the speed stakes . A comparison of the average qualifying time shows that men are faster for every seeding group ( with the exception of the CC charity batch ). However , this qualification prowess does not translate into race-day performance . Women win the average finish time battle for every batch except H .
The biggest swing is in A batch . The average A batch man qualifies over 5 minutes faster than his average female counterpart . This should translate into an average Comrades finish time of roughly 12m30s faster , but instead , the women finish over 22 minutes ahead of the men . That ’ s a swing on the predicted time of almost 35 minutes !
If an A batch runner of either gender runs according to their potential , they should finish under 7:30 to earn a coveted silver medal *. The average A-seeded woman does this quite comfortably in 7:23 , but the average A-seeded man grossly underachieves in 7:45 . (* For women , this is an Isavel Roche-Kelly medal , but for all intents and purposes this is the same as a silver medal .)
Someone who knows a thing or two about pacing is 2017 Comrades winner Camille Herron , who
recently ran 435 kilometres in one go to break the 48-hour World Record . I showed her the stats and she provided an insightful response from the front of the field : “ I feel like the men pace themselves like it ’ s a high school cross country race , going out very fast and falling back after halfway . In the early stages , there ’ s a large pack of men around us , but by the time we finish we ’ re all alone . I remember seeing men stopping more often , cramping , walking , and falling back .”
Definitely Not Splitting Hairs
Not only do women win a clean sweep of splits per seeding batch in the second half of Comrades , they also have a faster average finish time than the men in all but the H batch at the back of the field . There are a number of possible reasons for this , the most likely being that H batch women who start Comrades have a far higher likelihood of finishing Comrades than H batch men ( 72 % for female versus 65 % for men ) and , by definition , average finish time calculations exclude non-finishers .
Another interesting trend is that the female domination trend slowly but steadily diminishes as one works through the seeding batches , but the opposite is true of the medal comparison . As you can see below , men finish faster for every category except Vic Clapham . This is probably a result of men missing the medal they were aiming for and therefore finishing early in a slower consolation medal time bracket , whereas women are more likely to achieve their target medal , and thus finish late in the medal time bracket . Supporting this theory is the fact that the average qualifier time is much faster for men than for women in every medal category .
Super-analysis of the Stats
Andrew Collier , who is not bound by my limited statistical skills and the Excel toolbox , took this data analysis to the next level , to further illustrate the superiority of women at Comrades . The first graph he produced ( left ) shows positive and negative splits * for the entire field with men in blue and women in red . ( A positive split means that the athlete ran the second half of Comrades slower than the first half , a negative split means that the athlete sped up and ran the second half faster than the first .)
In this scattergram , the dotted line on zero ( x-axis ) indicates an exact even pace before and after the halfway timing mat at Drummond . Above this dotted line are people who ran the second half slower and below the dotted line are negative splits . Overall , it shows that women run the second half of Comrades much more consistently than the men regardless of
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