Women's corner

The girls enjoying a catch up after racing hard
1st to 4th at the Mt Blanc Triathlon, Passy France 2010

We are different. We know this. We enjoy this. We have more shapes to our bodies and often our attitudes, we get cycles (not talking of the TT type this time) and have different metabolism and natural endurance / physical strength balances to men.

What we don't really know is how much of the training, nutrition, race prep, race day and recovery tips that are generally written by and for men are equally relevant to us.

There is some interesting research I have found about this. I was intrigued by the concept recently after I read a blog that nicely highlighted the issues of male dominated studies and a few specific points re nutrition specific to carbo loading and recovery protien that it noted may not be as relevant to women.

http://amateurtrigirl.blogspot.com/2010/07/science-thursday-exercise-physiology.html

Women are physiologically and psychologically different on average to men. We were designed to be collecting berries not hunting the kangaroos! Men generally build strength to generate power more easily than women. Our endurance tends to be higher though, some studies showing it improving with age and childbirth. Of course I would agree. My view is that a 6 hour bike ride before children could be deemed to be hard work, whereas a 6 hr bike ride now with a busy home full of never ending jobs and two adventurous, troublesome, fun and cheeky boys to manage, is almost relaxing time out, especially in the beautiful mountains around our home!
In extreme endurance racing the gap betweeen women and men shortens. In fact, in ultrarunning women can compete head to head with men, such as at the 2002 Badwater where Pam Reed won the race outright. In comparison in the 100m sprint the difference between current world records is significant at 9.58s vs 10.49s with men 9.5% faster than women. In triathlon the percentage difference between men and women victors (Alistair Brownlee and Emma Moffatt) at the Olympic Distance ITU final last year was 13.7% versus last year's Ironman World Championships in Kona where the difference was 6.7%. Now we all know that Chrissy Wellington is an incredibly gifted female athlete, but then Crowie ain't too bad either!

There is always plenty of research that can confuse us by offering alternative / opposing views on the same subject. So without offering another view into this topic, I will provide some links for you if interested, note some clear differences between genders in relation to triathlon to consider and mention a few things I have noticed in my own nutrition, training, racing and recovery.

My advice is simply to look for and listen to many opinions, try out those which you trust and / or sound reasonable and then look to your body for the feedback on whether it works for you or not over a sensible trial time. This is particularly true of women in the male dominated field of triathlon, but not uniquely so. Everyone's body is different, so listen to, and respect the feedback it gives you when you try something new.

Apologies for a long blog, but I have loved researching this topic. Really interesting! As this is such a big topic, I have split my thoughts into four areas: relevant differences in nutrition, training, social preferences and psychology. I will start to tackle each of them over the next few weeks so I can do them justice. Of course this is also a topic I will continually learn about so will add more over time.