On Saturday afternoon, my wife went on a shopping excursion along Maiden Lane and Post Street while I relaxed in the hotel room, resting and snacking and preparing for Sunday morning’s run. A front-page article in the Chronicle naturally caught my eye: For a relaxing girls’ getaway, try a marathon. Written by long-time Bay Area sportswriter C.W. Nevius, it’s a frustrating but still interesting exploration of the boom in women’s running in the past decade. Excerpt:
“It’s a tidal wave,” says Amby Burfoot, executive editor of Runner’s World magazine and former winner of the Boston Marathon. “Thirty years ago, less than 5 percent of marathon participants were women. Now it is 40 percent.”
And higher. Race officials say the San Francisco Marathon is split almost exactly in half — 50 percent women, 50 percent men.
A group of five women from Fort Collins, Colo., represent the demographic perfectly. Tiffany Green, Connie Le, Kris Baugh, Erin Thomas and Stephanie Rogers are all in their 30s, married with children, and here on a running vacation.
“It’s girl time,” says Green. “We’re using this race as a reason to get away.”
This is not news, and it’s something I blogged about after I ran a marathon in June 2005. Nevius explains one reason for the change:
The new marathoners make it on a much lighter workload. Cheryl Cannon, down from Sacramento to run the marathon, says she rarely logs more than 40 miles in a week. Cannon, 42, started running only five years ago, but this will be her sixth marathon. Like many women, she runs with a regular group, which meets three times a week to jog 6 miles.
“We go out there and chat,” she says, “and the trees don’t repeat the gossip. We’re all in our 40s, have kids, and in much better shape than our husbands.”
That’s a good point. While big running events are booming, participation by men has actually gone down. What’s the reason for that?
“First,” says Burfoot, “it’s not a strength or skill sport. And second, success is measured in discipline, determination and consistency. Those are traits that women are all good at.”
Okay, so I looked up Cheryl Cannon’s results online — and two years my senior, she smoked me by fourteen minutes, running a 3:38 and finishing 11th overall among women in her age group. Nevius’ article suggests she runs only for fun and companionship. But her outstanding time, which puts her in the top 5% of her age group, is the result of hard work as well. Reading the whole article, one might have expected ol’ Cheryl to barely squeeze in under the six-hour cutoff.
The race director, a Peter Nantell, came up with this whopper:
“Women really do like to do it as a group,” says Nantell. “While men seem to run solo, women are about the sense of community.”
That doesn’t fit with my experience running marathons and ultras for a decade here in Southern California; the local running clubs (Foothill Flyers, Los Feliz Flyers, Pasadena Pacers) have grown close to 50/50 membership, but are hardly dominated by women. Admittedly, I don’t have access to membership lists so my testimony is only anecdotal; as someone who has formed some of his best and most enduring friendships with other men while running track and trail, Nantell’s assertion rings decidedly false. It “sounds good”, of course, because it fits in with our cultural assumptions about men as “solitary wolves” and our image of the “lonely” male runner. But the truth is that men are as reliant on companionship as are women, even if our disastrous cultural rules about masculinity have robbed so many of us of the emotional skills necessary for maintaining deep and honest friendships.
The rise in women’s participation in marathoning is to be welcomed. The suggestion that the vast majority of these new marathoners aren’t competitive and are only running it as part of a “girl’s weekend” is offensive. Now, a race director like Peter Nantell might want to project the image of the San Francisco Marathon as ideal for a fun and non-competitive weekend for women who have left their husbands at home. After all, big-city marathons require huge concessions from city services — streets are closed for hours, traffic is a mess, a major police presence is needed. The selling point of having a big marathon, of course, is that the marathoners will all need hotel rooms in which to sleep, and restaurants at which to carbo-load the night before and celebrate afterwards. And of course, they’ll do some shopping. Given the dubious assumption that women spend more than men, especially when they travel in groups, is there any wonder that a race director would want to create the impression in the minds of the city leaders that they are welcoming a horde of middle-aged women with a lot of disposable income — and not a lot of grumpy, neurotic, solitary men who are likely to nibble trail mix in their two-star hotel rooms?
(Hey, I’m a neurotic, periodically grumpy middle-aged man who loves to run. But I love to run with my friends, and I shopped with abandon yesterday after my marathon.)
Bottom line: we can celebrate the wonderful growth in women’s marathon participation without repeating sexist stereotypes about “girls’ weekends” and women’s supposed lack of interest in competition. C.W. Nevius ought to have known better.
Ugh, a “relaxing girls’ getaway”? What a great way to belittle an accomplishment that takes a lot of hard work.
Of course, the article ignores the closing gap between men’s and women’s record marathon times, and the fact that women’s (generally) higher body fat might make us better equipped than men to run marathon distances and greater.
That’s awfully irritating.
The next time you’re in SF, check out Herbivore, on Valencia around 20th or 21st. Entirely vegan, very popular, and more affordable than Millenium (which is lovely as well). There’s also a South Indian restaurant next door which is predominantly vegetarian, and I think it would be pretty easy to get a delicious and totally vegan meal there as well. I miss both those places since moving away.
Oh, and congratulations on running a good race. I am not one of the women closing the gap, so you you seriously smoked my marathon time.
even if our disastrous cultural rules about masculinity have robbed so many of us of the emotional skills necessary for maintaining deep and honest friendships.
The only thing that can be truly said is that these cultural norms don’t work for you.
For those of us they do work for, who do indeed have “deep and honest friendships” in spite of your experiences with that model - we’re not aberrations. And we’re not “doing it wrong.”
Funny about those stereotypes…I run half marathons, and despite all the urging from my husband, and the great groups at my local running room (Canadian store) I prefer to run alone. And the reason, that I can only admit here anonymously, is because I am too competitive, and find running with a group of people that I’m always secretly trying to beat too mentally tiring. Being by myself on those long runs allows random thoughts, bursts of symphony, secret laughs and unkind observations to flit through my brain. It’s very theraputic for me. I occasionally meet someone running my pace and run along, or my husband leaves his (faster) group to run with me for a new distance or a speed workout. As well, many of the runners in my neighbourhood do ‘10 & 1’s’, which I personally hate and find distracting.
Glad you had a good time, and there’s no shame in being like a human metromone while running…I’m very similar in my running style.
I laughed out loud when I read the “For a relaxing girls’ getaway, try a marathon.” Maybe a 10K, but not a marathon! When I did distance running, I found that more men ran together, and the serious female runners were more likely to be loners. AMG’s comments were spot on as to why women with kids, husbands and careers enjoy the solitude of the long run.
And regarding Cheryl Cannon, my guess would be that she does meet with a group of women to put in a friendly, chatty 6-miler, but she has some other components to her training in addition to that run. And I find it amazing the article suggested that “the new marathoners can make it on a much lighter workload.” Has the human body changed so much that it’s not necessary to put in long runs to prepare for a marathon? Not the last time that I checked. I know some very talented female runners, and they still have to put in their miles. One wonders if Cheryl Cannon doesn’t do over 40 miles on her “taper” weeks prior to the marathon, and that fact was conveniently left off.
But whatever — I hate to see marathons and the training that accompanies them to be portrayed as a “lite” girls-weekend-out thing. The discipline and effort that it takes to participate in a marathon deserve more dignity, as do the women and men who undertake the challenge.
Very true Jay Gee…I too found it very hard to believe that Ms. Cannon was only running 6 miles with the girls and had a sub 3:40 marathon. Unless she is the missing evolutionary link, she would never be able to run that pace and distance on such short training runs. Most of the 3-3 1/2 hour marathoners I know train about 3-4 times a week, and log somewhere around/over 75 km’s a week. You have to put the k’s in! I always get a laugh by those training plans in magazines that tell you how to run a marathon/10k/etc in 10 weeks or something. Most of them are unrealistic and look like they’re created to promote sports injuries. Many joggers who go from no/short milage a week to high milage often suffer stress fractures/IT band problems/knee problems etc. because they really don’t know how to taper a plan to fit their body/pace/lifestyle.
But it is true that in the races I enter I see more and more women running–here in Canada at some of the biggest races (Ottawa & Toronto marathons & halves had over 10,000 people) it was nearly 50/50 men & women. And just from perusing the results of some of the 10’s & 5’s I enter, I would say that although there were more elite men, there were almost more women just getting out and doing the distance, time be damned.
Huh. I know Herbivore has its fans, but really, by omnivore standards the food just doesn’t measure up. Um, except the blueberry corn bread. Anyway, Cha-Ya is in the same neighborhood, also all-vegan, slightly pricier than Herbivore (though nowhere near Millennium!) and OMG delicious.
Vegetarian restaurants in SF. I assume the guide breaks them down by which are vegan.
Re: “For a relaxing girls’ getaway, try a marathon.” What a condescending comment.