Julia Lucas pre-race comments about female talent pool

geek, I hate to tell you but Julia just explained what she meant above. No need to contemplate what she meant anymore and not necessary to do an analysis of her interview like it was the lyrics in the Beatles White Album or something.

Julia, have a nice Thanksgiving and great, great race.

if they gave scholarships for nurturing, talking and taking care of children, the talent pool of men would be much less condensed than the women's.

despite what they tell you kids in school these days, there are big differences between men and women. take a group of kids, boys and girls put them in a playground next to a construction site with heavy equipment. the boys will be lined up along the fence staring slack jawed at the cranes and dumptrucks, the girls will be completly oblivious to the construction site because they will be too busy talking to each other.

given the same group of kids, boys will be chasing each other around, tackling, wrestling, etc ... the girls will chit chat all day, maybe some will see what the boys are doing and do the same.

boys and men are wired to do physical stuff, like girls and women are wired to talk and be more social.

Julia is simply observing the facts.

knower of knowledge wrote:

kartelite wrote:

I'd guess a typical D1 guy runs 70-80 mpw during summer training, I would be surprised if most girls are even above 50-60.

I used to think this way and then my college coach explained it to me as such: If a guy is running 80 MPW @ 7 min miles they are running 560 minutes. If a woman runs 60 mintes @ 9 minute miles they are running 540 minutes, so the gap isn't that big. A lot of the other factors besides mileage could be similar.

Not a great explaination, but I think there is more at stake BETWEEN the genders than just mileage.

Why would women be training 2 min/mile slower than men? Comparing racing paces, the difference would be around 1 min/mile (probably less). Furthermore, my experience has been that faster runners don't necessarily train much faster than slower runners. They may do some interval workouts faster, however most 34:00 and 30:00 10K runners could do off-days together without either compromising their training.

There is a much greater spread of talent level among female cross country or distance runners than there are among the men. It's true on the pro level, too. Football doesn't have any position that has cross-over to distance running, though soccer does. Volleyball probably draws more girls away than football draws boys away.

If one was to look at grade levels among high school runners you would see a lot more younger girls doing well. It's not odd for 8th and 9th graders to be among the best high school xc runners and rare among the boys. If you look at a lot of the top college teams you will see quite a few Freshmen girls in the top 5/7 and agin rarer on the men's side. This would tend to lead me to the observation- that maturation among girls hurts athletic/running progress and that this process continues from mid teens into 20's or so. I have observed that this is quite frustrating for the females and that the sport loses a lot of fine runners. Senior girls on high school team are the "survivors" and hence you ahve amuch smaller pool moving on to college competition. Those who do are good but comapred to the guys the numbers are much smaller. On the male side if a guy stays motivated he will see at least some progress every year. This progress makes staying with the sport much easier. I think this helps explain the bigger "gap" or time spreads among the females. My observation is that females have at least an equal competitive drive. Let's be fair how many guys would continue to work hard and stay in the sport if they were not seeing improvement. How many would stay in the game facing the same frustration that many females face??

You looked GREAT at the pre-race presser!

I'm a huge fan Julia!

Congrats!!!

:)

Hey, I've seen you out running probably 5 times the past couple weeks around State. Got any races coming up? I may start training again next term for some spring track races.

Saw some pics of you from Monday, what was that crap on your face?

I think you hit the nail on the head. I think another point which no one has really brought up is Title IX. It was set in place to give female athletes equal opportunities, and it is still in place because society hasn't promoted equal opportunities. The interpretation of Title IX has led to some poor decisions which is a whole other topic. Socially in America and especially in other countries, it is more acceptable for a man to be a competitive athlete than a woman to do the same thing.

Yup, you're right. Physical changes brought on by puberty usually don't have a negative affect on distance running performance for men, but they do for women. Men often grow in height and muscle mass. Take a look at most of the top elite female distance runners, they came out of puberty with narrow hips and modest breast size. Most girls don't.

Hey Genetic, its not just the obvious change in appearance ie size it's other biological changes too. These change are more subtle but probably explain why females who "size" doesn't change much still seem to "plateau" or regress from a performance standpoint. :)

Of course, but in most cases there are obvious changes to point to.

There was an interesting study a while back that had a group of people take a test (men and women). Then, they asked the test takers how they THINK they did on the test. Then, they asked the test takers if they'd be willing to participate in a competition involving the test subject matter.

When divided up between sexes, women slightly out performed men on the actual test. However, Men had a higher confidence level (slightly, I think) about how they did on the test. Finally, Men were overwhelmingly more willing to put their test knowledge up to some sort of competition.

Yes there are puberty and genetic differences between men and women. But i think the biggest reason men's sports in general are more "deep" or "competative" than women's is because there are disproportionately more men who are interested in being (and sacrificing to be) competative athletes than women.

Yep, there are several factors. Many among those relatively few females who do have an initial interest face more barriers than males do.

Genetic wrote:

Yep, there are several factors. Many among those relatively few females who do have an initial interest face more barriers than males do.

You mean like all the extra roster spots open for the taking on women's teams than men's teams?

Genetic wrote:

Yup, you're right. Physical changes brought on by puberty usually don't have a negative affect on distance running performance for men, but they do for women. Men often grow in height and muscle mass. Take a look at most of the top elite female distance runners, they came out of puberty with narrow hips and modest breast size. Most girls don't.

Absolutely and Julia is right (don't know what that bubba smoov person is talking about on the previous page)!

College Men XC runners are more physically 'similar' than their female counterparts. To say that training harder (smarter as well) could make up for these physical differences may be true to an extent, for BOTH men and women (~lower body fat, more mitochondria, more blood vessels, greater blood volume). However, there is still going to be greater physical variability amongst women because of anatomical factors can't be changed from training harder.

I think any guy would take a reduced scholarship or walking-on or even forging a running career separate from any scholastic endeavors over having his hips grow several inches wider and his pecs grow by 50% or more via fatty deposits. Any truly good male runner won't lack for a roster spot or a scholarship.

Since when does football draw distance runners away from the sport?