interaction between age and gender in ultramarathon performance times

Abstract

The predictors of ultramarathon performance remain uncertain. Although men tend to have faster finishing times, low entrance rates for women and historical rules banning women from long endurance events suggest social barriers might play a role. The objective of our study was to examine, using data from the Comrades ultramarathon how the gender gap for finishing times changed longitudinally in the various age groups. We hypothesized that this gap would show both a historical decrease, and also be less in older participants. The Comrades data set has the declared gender, age category, running time, year of the event and the direction of the event (up versus down) for each participant. The age categories are Senior (20 to 39 years old), Veteran (40 to 49 years old), Master (50 to 59 years old), and Grandmaster (age greater than 60 years old). The performance gap between women and men was less in the older as compared to the younger age groups (F = 76.51, p < .001). This difference in finishing times between men and women became less over time in our longitudinal analysis (β = -0.377 ± 0.158, p = .021) and was quite small (12 minutes) in the Grandmaster age category.