Women are breaking men's endurance records—here's why

Sophie Woods, a 42-year-old runner from New Zealand, spent 29 days crossing the Alps on foot. She started in Trieste and finished in Monaco, covering roughly 2,000 kilometers while climbing more than 100,000 meters of elevation. She did this on three to four hours of sleep per night. When she crossed the finish line, she had become the fastest person ever to complete the Via Alpina—not just the fastest woman, but the fastest human. She beat the previous men's record by more than seven days.

Woods is not alone. In recent years, women have been breaking men's records across ultra-endurance sports with striking regularity. Rachel Entrekin won the Cocodona 250 in 2026, a 400-kilometer race in the United States, setting a new overall course record. Tara Dower ran Vermont's Long Trail—about 440 kilometers—in 3 days, 18 hours, and 29 minutes, beating the men's record by 2 hours and 40 minutes. In 2019, Fiona Kolbinger from Germany became the first woman to win the Transcontinental Race, cycling nearly 4,000 kilometers across Europe and finishing almost eight hours ahead of the second-place male rider. That same year, Jasmin Paris won the 430-kilometer Spine Race in Great Britain, shattering the previous men's record by more than 12 hours.

Research helps explain what's happening. An analysis by RunRepeat and the International Association of Ultrarunners examined over five million results from more than 15,000 ultramarathons. The data revealed a striking pattern: the longer the distance, the smaller the gender gap becomes. In shorter races, men averaged 11.1% faster than women. But at the 100-mile mark, that gap had narrowed to just 0.25%. At distances exceeding 195 miles, women were on average 0.6% faster than men. The advantages men typically hold—greater muscle mass, higher maximal oxygen uptake—matter less when the race stretches beyond human endurance into something else entirely.

Physiology plays a role. Women tend to have a higher proportion of fatigue-resistant Type I muscle fibers. They rely more on fat as an energy source during endurance activities, which becomes crucial when an athlete is running for a month straight. Woods herself pointed to this: "Probably we are better at burning fat, and therefore it makes us able to go longer." But she also named something harder to measure. "I think we're good at putting our egos aside. And I think we're good at solving problems." An ultramarathon is not just about speed. It is a series of decisions about sleep, nutrition, and pain management. Woods ran with a support team she trusted completely. "I just put my life in their hands," she said. "You kind of control everything you can and then you just throw it into chaos and see what comes out in the wash."

The physical toll was immense. Toward the end of her run, Woods was sleeping as little as 90 minutes a night. When she could not continue, she would collapse next to the trail. "You just curl up on the side in a little mossy glen and hope that no one thinks you've died," she said. Her alarm would sound again by three in the morning. Her team estimated she was consuming between 6,000 and 7,000 calories a day—sports drinks, soft drinks, burritos, falafel wraps, sandwiches, pasta, McDonald's food—much of it eaten while moving. In the Dolomites, the heat and pain became overwhelming. "I bawled my eyes out in the Dolomites," she said. "I was really hot. I was really sore. I was really swollen. I was shuffling along and I was just like: I don't know if I can do this." She continued anyway.

Yet Woods remains frustrated by the gap in how women's bodies are studied compared to men's. "As a woman, you need to be very careful when you read these studies to actually see who they are studying, because often it will be 10 male cyclists," she said. "We have just been left behind in all of the research for decades." She sees the broader picture: "As women, we are fighting for crumbs in the sporting world. We are fighting for more coverage, we are fighting for more research, we are fighting for more sponsorship." The records women are breaking are real. But they are breaking them while operating with less knowledge about their own bodies, less funding, and less attention. Sports physiologist Nicholas Tiller has called very long endurance events "the great equaliser." Woods is simply not interested in who holds the advantage on paper. "I think the bravest thing to do is to try," she said. "Try the scary thing. It doesn't matter what happens in the end because at least you've tried."