h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In our assembly at school this morning, the speaker started off be talking about the differences between men and women. One of the first things he said was about multitasking and it reminded me of a thread I started last year..

He then went onto say about women having more stamina and talked a little about Ellen Mcarthur http://www.teamellen.com/ and her achievements and amzing stamina.

Certainly having 2 kids under 5 requires a great deal of stamina although they have just started to play with each other more and don't need constant entertainment from me.

Or maybe the guy speaking this morning and other men who think women have more stamina are using it as an excuse to be lazy gets

What do you reckon?

Ice

Stamina largley depends on what it is you are doing as mental attitude plays as much part as physical ability.

If your hear isn't in what ever you are doing no amount of physyical abilty is going to help you. But if you really believe in what you are doing, really want to succeed and have the determination to do so then the stmaina just comes naturally.


If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

Donald

Define "stamina".

On average, if I gave a 40 kilogram rucksack to a randomly selected sample 50 men and 50 women and told them to run with it, after 100 miles I'd expect the men to be in the lead.

Generalising from special cases like Ellen Whatserface Whinge-bag is always dangerous. Yes, not many men could go two months on 2 hours sleep. But not many women could either, and in any case who would want to?

There is observational evidence that women are different from men in physical ways other than the obvious, including tolerance of pain and acuity of peripheral vision. But something as vague and variable as "stamina"? Nah. Overly neat generalisation pressed into service to support an unrelated point. Which is pretty common in school assemblies I should expect...

H.

Ask the girl who shared my bed last night.

She'd leave you in no doubt as to who has the most stamina.

Bob "They call me duracell" the Farmer

Yes we do..thats why we go through childbirth n not the men,they couldn't handle it!

I believe this comes from the fat levels that are natural in your common-or-garden men and women.

Women naturally have more than men in general - note this is not about overeating, health matters or any other such thing - just that overall body fat is higher in females.

This has led some sports scientists to postulate that in a race between average man and average woman over various distances...

100m - man wins
1 mile - man wins
Marathon - man wins (although percentage gap is *much* lower)
100 miles or more - woman may win due to higher fat reserves leading to ability to survive better over *vast* distances.

This has never been proven as far as I know although it makes sense.

To conclude that women have better stamina is stretching it to near breaking point though.
One would have to be pretty darn trained up to attempt such a long run so you'd not really be looking at your average person...

As generalisations go, it's pretty much toss I'd say

<>

Interesting Orcus, but not proved as you say.

Serephina, how could one simulate childbirth especailly the 24 hr labour thing for men and see how they would do?? (I can't talk from experience becuase I had 2 sections).

I think maybe as Donald says, it's the mind thing so maybe we (men and women) have similar levels of stamina (averaged out) some do and some don't...

>> On average, if I gave a 40 kilogram rucksack to a randomly selected sample 50 men and 50 women and told them to run with it, after 100 miles I'd expect the men to be in the lead. <<

If it's stamina you're testing, then surely you'd measure the number of each sex that completed the race, not who was in the lead.



RF

Indeedy RF. Good point, I wish I'd said it.

<>

I doubt this would prove anything as women have 'the childbirth gene' that both allows them to live through the pain of child birth but also drink cups of tea in two minutes flat from the time it is poured while men have to wait until it cools a bit so us wimps can drink it with burning our mouths.



Isn't physical stamina to do with the efficient supply of oxygen/energy to muscles and not to do with size of muscles etc?

Stamina is also age related. How many nineteen year old marathon runners do you see. Most are in there thirties and forties and some even older.

Once we are past about 25, physical ability starts to decline, but stamina improves as the mind matures and gets better with age.

Donald

<>

Ah, yes like a good cheese...off to get a bottle of port, crackers and a chainsaw...Ethel! come lay your head on this plate.

But stamina isn;t simply a mental mind over matter thing is it?
Long distance cyclists and runners have pulse rates of 50 beats/minute and that can't simple be a mental thing - there must be a physical aspect to it.

I put this question to some women and the responses were ....

We can compare this properly when one man goes through childbirth

and

Yeah ... women need more stamina ... they have to put up with men

Another issue here, with rucksacks and running, is that on average, men have greater upper body strength and women greater lower body strength. (On average, because of course there are exceptions both ways.)

Upper/lower body strength *should* be irrelevant. A properly fitted and evenly loaded rucksack should apply most of the weight to the hips, and should basically feel like more bodyweight. Strength, per se, should not be an issue, except inasmuch as you need the strength in your legs to stand up with it on. But once you're actually running with a good pack on, it just feels like a part of your body.

H.

Do women have greater lower body strength?
Which parts of the body would this be? Hips? Legs? or what?

Strength is not the issue.

Stamina is, so measuring heart rate after a 40 mile hike or something might work as a comparison. I do think that there is something in the mental energy thing to. Maybe there is a difference between physical stamina and mental stamina...

I understood that long-distance swimming was the area where women could really shine. Presumably not only is the combination of fitness and body fat for energy helpful, but the fat isn't a weight burden and may even help on the insulation/bouyancy front.

For long-distance running, I'd have thought that the best women would tend to be sufficiently skinny that they are much more of a male build anyway.

Body fat seems liklier to be useful more in survival-style situations (polar walking, high altitude mountaineering, etc) than outright *sporting* endurance activities. (Though mountaineering can also require quite a substantial reserve of muscle strength to allow adequate functioning despite the bodily attrition of altitude, and it may be rather easier for men to build up excess muscle than women).

There's certainly an experience/mental aspect to stamina. Some may simply be a case of avoiding excessive short-term speed where the payoff in time saved is not enough to justify the damage done, but in stressful situations, having a whole string of unpleasant past experiences to look back on can be a huge boost to just plodding on in the relatively certain knowledge that one has survived worse experiences in the past.
I suppose someone naturally mellower or more positive could get a similar stamina boost from just not seeing things as bleakly as someone else might.

Additionally, with experience one might also have got used to having a brain operating on low blood-sugar levels. If one's technique is more automatic, and one has had practice at being zombified and still functioning, it may be easier to keep plodding on with some useful mental function despite near-exhaustion.

Some differing links:
http://home.hia.nstephens/gender.htm

http://www.racingtheplanet.com/medicaltent/women_superior.asp

http://www.runnersworld.co.za/wheres/index.php?miles=180&PHPSESSID=f952ded86047c9bd185bf46ec3b7f50b

Thank you Potholer.

I shall read with interest.

Ice

It seems to me using McArthur as an example is a bad idea. She is the person to have circumnavigated the world in the shortest period of time on her own. But out of all the other people to have done so, would I be wrong in assuming most of them are male? Seems most people who climb Mount Everest, run across America or such things that require stamina are male.

The round-the world race is a strange example anyway - presumably boat technology has advanced somewhat in recent times, and the more famous someone is, the likelier they are to get a more expensive boat.

Times will presumably trend downwards over time for technological reasons.