Back of the Pack

I would have thought that all things are proportionate with respect to the oxygen thing. I would think women are more efficent by way of the type of exercises the average woman would do compared to the exercises the average guy would do...cardio vs. strength. When strength training, there seems to be a lot of breaks in between working out and less calorie burning.

I am an athlete and I started taking a fitness course at my local gym/rec centre and although I am one of two guys out of 12 people in my class, I must say I am impressed with the strength and endurance of women with respect to passive exercise (were body weight is the main weight used...yes I weigh probably 40lbs more then the average woman there but I imagine I have more muscle to hold me up... This oxygen thing confuses me). The point being, not a lot of men are taking "fitness" classes when working out. It is a real eye opener for me and a postive addition to my training program.

Anyway, It is great that people have made huge advances on exercise programs and more people are interested in getting fit.

ps. I wouldn't be insecure at any of these things... I don't think people judge people who are out making themselves healthy and fit.

Research into what type of goal you wish to achieve and how to achieve it is absolutely necessary. I wouldn't necessarily rely on blogs to determine my potential routine as not all body types will react the same way but it may provide some incentive to get out there and start dong something.

Just convincing yourself to get up off the couch and do some type of cardio/aerobic work is more often than not the most difficult step of all...at least until you hit that three month wall.

This is certainly good news but I would argue that those extra bits of flab (mostly on the thighs) many women runners carry around add to the effort. And that fat, unlike the spare tire, is weight that our bodies do not recognise as a health risk. I'm no scientist but, from my experience and observation, it seems that most women (particularly those over 20) typically carry more weight on our bodies than men do. So I perceive it that guys have an advantage (those of you, that is, who are not dealing with existing weight problems). And this is to say nothing of the weight some women have to manage above the waist. An otherwise fit woman with larger breasts is dealing with an extra challenge. This is probably why we never see any women athletes in the elite category with more than a B cup.

Additionally, no matter how many times our significant others or friends tell us that extra flab on the hips is the way nature intended us to be, it's still tough to put a year or more into running only to discover that those giggling bits haven't turned into lean muscle tissue. I'm not suggesting that we should give in to the culture of thin, but that many women runners (I know) seem to work twice as hard as our male counterparts to get the training results AND get rid of the excess weight, weight that ultimately slows us down.

Obviously, a thin little speed demon of a woman isn't going to be dealing with these kinds of issues. She is going to have the advantage you talk about. But most women, with the exception of elite runners, don't have that kind of body.

Bottom line: I think women have to work harder for the same training results (as a result of the extra weight we carry).

Kirk:

You must've heard of Pam Read. She won the 135 mile long Badwater Ultramarathon twice - 2002 and 2003 - and last year became the first person to run 300 miles straight, without a sleep break.

What I should have tried to make clear is that if you put Joe or Jane Couch Potato onto an exercise regime, Jane will more often than not get fitter, quicker. Joe will get there too, and may even blast past Jane in a race. But my money says Jane won't be quite as physically spent afterwards.

PH

Maybe before this guy starts insulting his own sex (CBC loves to publish articles that they would never publish if the words 'men' and 'women' were interchanged), he should check various long distance endurance facts -- the records of which are all held by men, or consider the case of the four year-old Indian boy who set the world record recently by running 65 km continuously and can apparently run indefinitely. Or consider the Tour de France, or the supermarathons (50 marathons in 50 days). Maybe Mr Hazipetros will fatigue, but don't assume the rest of us men will.

Also the previous posters seem to confuse *power* (the rate at which work is done) versus *energy*. In the former case (i.e. with cars), the power expenditure is much higher because of the increased energy loss *rate* to air resistance at the higher speed. Air resistance losses in humans are going to be comparable at either of the two speeds (i.e. a mile in 6 minutes, or a mile in 10 minutes) because they are so low, so other factors have to be considered: in particular the relative heat loss at the two speeds. Which brings us back to another error in the article: only if humans were perfect machines, and we ignored air resistance, would we then be able to conclude that the *energy* expended to do one mile in 10 minutes is the same as that expended to do one mile in six minutes. And, as anybody who's ever stepped on a treadmill that measures calorie expenditures will attest, the energy expended at the two different speeds over a fixed distance is not the same, because human power does not scale linearly with speed (i.e. there are inefficiencies) that the naive physics analysis offered in this article is neglecting.

Maybe the first few times you run it faster you'll burn more energy, but lets remember that as you get more fit (the more times you do the run) your body expends less energy... so I'd say that maybe it pays to continue to push yourself if you want to burn more faster, but its not the same as a vehicle.

Running one mile in six minutes definitely requires more energy than running one mile in ten minutes. Think of your vehicle: you burn more fuel travelling at 100k/hur than travelling at 50k/hr, over the same distance.