why is there such a disparity between mens and womens college running?

from what I've seen in the US, men are a lot more serious about running than women

You can get the average D1 male to do a 20 mile long run, and a 100 mile week.

If you tell an average D1 girl to run much more than 10 miles she'll throw a hissy fit. I've had quite the experience telling girls that the 40 mile weeks they're running really are much under what is necessary to be good.

During the week, guys think about the race on saturday; girls think about the party on saturday night. Its a whole different mind set. Not all girls are like this which is why the few serious girls there are are able to pwn, and create such a disparity in times.

old coach wrote:

from what I've seen in the US, men are a lot more serious about running than women

You can get the average D1 male to do a 20 mile long run, and a 100 mile week.

If you tell an average D1 girl to run much more than 10 miles she'll throw a hissy fit. I've had quite the experience telling girls that the 40 mile weeks they're running really are much under what is necessary to be good.

During the week, guys think about the race on saturday; girls think about the party on saturday night. Its a whole different mind set. Not all girls are like this which is why the few serious girls there are are able to pwn, and create such a disparity in times.

I experienced just the opposite. When I was in college, the girls didn't do better than they did because they raced each other in practice EVERY DAY and there was always at least two of the top 7 at any given time walking around in a boot.

Title IX forces committed male runners out of the sport and allows any female with a uterus in.

^ Agreed

It's true, the male talent pool is extremely deep whereas the women have to be begged to run. Look at the performance lists, there's a 3 second spread from 1-50 in the 800 whereas in the women there's a 6 second gap.

Hate you Title IX, and your false equality.

3^2 wrote:

Title IX forces committed male runners out of the sport and allows any female with a uterus in.

A uterus is optional bitches.

because men under 25 are so misogynistic

Ha yeah right. I ran at two different schools. Started out at a d3 and transferred to a top d1 school. At both schools the girls were more serious than the guys. It was the guys who were thinking about/ planning the parties and such. The girls were completed committed from eating right all the time to probably running more than they should.

I hate to stereotype this way as well, but if there were a stereotype you have it completely backwards.

lower level DI runner here. At my school the girls dont do ish. they get away with it cause we are in a shitty conference. the guys bust there ass. just my experience

Annd wrote:

Ha yeah right. I ran at two different schools. Started out at a d3 and transferred to a top d1 school. At both schools the girls were more serious than the guys. It was the guys who were thinking about/ planning the parties and such. The girls were completed committed from eating right all the time to probably running more than they should.

I hate to stereotype this way as well, but if there were a stereotype you have it completely backwards.

you clearly went to two of very few schools in the country like this.

all of my running camp friends at a dozen or so schools from DI NCAA XC-qualifying schools to moderate level DIII schools would agree with the idea that college girl distance runners either dont dedicate as much of their lives to the sport, or dont bother to learn more about how to improve (so even if they decide to take it more seriously than their teammates/coach, they dont know how to progress on their own.)

Semenya wrote:

3^2 wrote:

Title IX forces committed male runners out of the sport and allows any female with a uterus in.

A uterus is optional bitches.

post of the year

Also need to look at the high school depth discrepancy. At almost every state xc meet the number of senior boys in the top 50 out numbers the number of senior girls by about 3 to 1. Add to that a decent percentage of respectable girls who have no desire to contiue running in college and that probably out numbers guys by at least 3 to 1. Title IX has actually helped the women's improvement since so much money has been thrown into the mix and many of the old drop outs are staying on to grab some cash. I too have found my guys in general much more focused and dedicated to the sport than the women overall. Ask the average collegiate female runner anything about track statistics or training ideas and you'll get a bunch of blank stares whereas a far greater percentage of the guys would be ready to engage you in discussion

oh my god i died laughing

oops, i meant at semenya's comment

This article basically explains it. The important paragraphs are the ones towards the bottom of the first page.

http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=21003

Realized I'd better paste it:

All true, but the difference between a 2:06 marathon and a 2:20 is not comparable to that between a 3:10 and a 3:24. Using percentile differences rather than arithmetic ones (a better but imperfect translation), adding 50 percent to each of these times yields 3:09 and 3:30. So, on this basis, tightening the fastest Boston Q-time for women by 10 minutes would make sense.

But, are 2:06 and 2:20 physiologically similar times for men and women? One way to judge this is to look at the world records for men and women: 2:03:59 and 2:15:25, respectively. That’s a difference of 9.2 percent, which would, on the surface, make a 3:10 for men equivalent to a 3:27:30 for women. Were the Boston Athletic Association to impose a tightening of its standards of this magnitude today — halving the 15.8 percent time gap in place at the moment — the percentage of women finishers in its 26.2-mile juggernaut would drop from the 42 percent mentioned in the WSJ article to approximately diddly-squat, give or take (or at least considerably less).

One thing to think about, though, is that the women’s world-record holder is an outlier of unfathomable magnitude. Paula Radcliffe of England has run the three fastest women’s times in history and is an astonishing 3:22 faster than the next-fastest woman, Catherine Ndereba of Kenya, who herself is the only woman besides Radcliffe with more than one sub-2:20 finish to her credit (nine names currently occupy that list). So, a statistician may feel justified in tossing Radcliffe and perhaps even Ndereba from any pertinent analyses.

To an undeniable extent, however, this is merely begging the question (in the original, logical sense, not the way the popular press likes to use it). That is, throwing out outliers only seems to assume the putative conclusion of the “keep the gap wide” side. Except for the those responsible for closing the gap, women just aren’t there yet and need more time to close the gap.

But there’s more to the story. A glance at the men’s and women’s all-time lists reveals something at least as striking: While Radcliffe enjoys a gulf of 2.5 percent over Ndereba with her 3:22 cushion, that same percentile gap on the men’s side — extending to 2:07:04 — includes 73 men. The world record-holder for a 10-year period ending a dozen years ago, Belayneh Dinsamo, is not among the top 50 of these. Even throwing out the very best of the best and including times starting at 2:05:00 for men and 2:20:00 for women, the number of men sitting in the fastest three-minute window (2:05:00 through 2:07:59) stands at 154, while the number of women in the corresponding window is 31.