Member-only story
Why Are So Few Women Running Ultra-Marathons?
And should we change that?
As a female ultra-runner and running coach, I was intrigued when I stumbled upon a study titled “Enablers and barriers in ultra-running: a comparison of male and female ultra-runners.”
Ultra-running has seen exponential growth in the last decade. However, considerably more men than women toe the starting lines of ultra-marathon races.
Why is this so?
And should we change it? Should we encourage more women to sign up for races?
The study tries to answer the first question. I will give my opinion on the second question in the conclusion of this article.
So how did the authors conduct the study, and what did they find? Let’s find out.
Study Methods
The research team from the University of the West of Scotland looked at two Scottish Ultra-marathons — the Scottish Jedburgh 3 Peaks ultra (JP3, 38 miles) and the Highland Fling race (HFR, 53 miles).
The researchers tried to discover gender differences in motivation, barriers and enabling factors to participate in ultra-marathon races. To do that, they used a constraints model that described three main aspects of constraints for leisure activities:
