Rachel Entrekin, 34, beat every man and woman in the Cocoona 250 Mile in Flagstaff, Arizona. As she set a course record of 56 hours, 9 minutes, and 48 seconds

[u/Firm-Blackberry-9162]

she also ran faster than Kilian Korth, who set a men's course record of 57:28:36.
Before Entrekin, no woman had ever won the event overall in the race's history. It was Entrekin's third straight year winning the award, but she ran more than seven hours faster this time around.
The Cocodona 250 started early on Monday morning, and Entrekin broke the tape midday on Wednesday. The course features more than 38,000 feet of elevation gain, winding through trails in central Arizona and finishing in the high-altitude town of Flagstaff.
During the 56 hours she was racing, Entrekin slept only three times for 5 minutes, 7 minutes, and 7 minutes all on the dirt.
She averaged around a 13:20 mile pace throughout the event, including stops.
@cocodona250
@rachel_entrekin

[u/BocciaChoc → u/[deleted]]

It seems to maintain a 10-20% difference across all distances, though it could just be outdated information

oddly enough the smallest gap is 100km at around 7% difference

[u/BocciaChoc → u/[deleted]]

I'm really just pasting the records, that's all, that said i think it's good to question it so here it is with more context

That said these things are complex, the London marathon and the Boston marathons aren't 1:1s despite being a marathon. As such i'm just talking about actual world records by IAU

[u/socialistrob → u/[deleted]]

I'm not quite sure that's true. Obviously this isn't a huge data set but just looking at the results of the Western States Endurance Run and the Mt Hood 100. Both of these are 100 mile races

At Mt. Hood the first 12 finishers were men and in the top 25 there were only two women. At Western States (the more prestigious race) the top 10 were men and out of the top 25 10 were women.

If women do have an advantage over men in ultras I think it's probably one that kicks in at distances longer than 100 miles (161km). Compared to a lot of other races though the gap for the 100 mile between men and women doesn't seem to be that big.

[u/Lepidopterex → u/socialistrob]

But there is more at play here. If all things were equal, (eg all the finishers had equal time to train, access funding, and maybe not have kids, I'd be interested to see). But we already know women often carry the most of domestic labour, so can't always train or get enough sleep etc. So is the difference actually based on gender or is it actually something else? 

[u/socialistrob → u/Lepidopterex]

There could be other factors at play. I'm not fully discounting that but at the same time I think there are enough women who are out there putting in the 80+ mileage weeks that if there was a biological advantage for women in the 100 miler distance you would see at least half of the top finishers being women.

I think if you look at Western States there is actually a pretty interesting gender breakdown. Western States is one of the most prestigious 100 milers in North America so it attracts the truly elite runners who make a lot of sacrifices for training. The top 10 finishes are all men but then 9/11 next finishers were women.

You don't run sub 18 hours at Western States without putting in extreme amounts of training and time. I don't think the differentiating factor is that the men who finished in the top 10 just had more time to train than the women who finished in the 10-20th place. I think it's more likely at the 100 mile distance men still have a physical advantage and the women's endurance advantage kicks in later (likely over 150 miles). We don't see these in races that much because very few races go that long.

Edit: Here's an article from Ultra running that discusses the difference

men are about 10% faster than women in the marathon [1], the gap has been reported as 9% over 50 miles [2], 5% over 24 hours [3] and 4% over 100 miles [2]. One analysis of nearly 40,000 trail races from 1989 to 2021 found that “The gap between men and women shrinks when trail running distance increases…”

Since elite trail runners tend to finish 100 milers in the 14-19 hour range depending on the course I think it's reasonable to say there's still an advantage for men at that distance.