When Gina Harcrow of Monument, Colorado, completed the 2023 Hardrock 100, she grew to become the twenty seventh feminine finisher of this yr’s race — a brand new file. The earlier excessive of 19 feminine finishers was set in 2022, which eclipsed the whole of 18 set again in 2017. Previous to that, the variety of feminine finishers fluctuated between 5 and 14 for greater than a decade.
In recent times, the Hardrock organizers specifically, and the working group usually, have labored to extend feminine participation in Hardrock. The choice just a few years in the past to conduct distinct lotteries for every gender and to base the variety of feminine starters on the variety of females within the lottery signifies that the variety of feminine starters continues to creep up.
This previous yr’s 29 feminine starters was probably the most in race historical past, two greater than the 27 that began in 2022. Whereas there may be actually extra work to be performed to assist make the occasion accessible to extra ladies and all types of oldsters, that is additionally fascinating and worthy of dialog and celebration.
Gina Harcrow kisses the rock, on the finish of her 2023 Hardrock 100 journey. Picture courtesy of Gina Harcrow.
Maybe most notably, this yr’s race noticed a exceptional 93% finisher charge within the ladies’s discipline. The lads’s discipline, in contrast, had a 72% finisher charge, fairly a distinction!
For years there was dialogue about why extra ladies don’t qualify for and run Hardrock. A number of years in the past, after a protracted dialogue concerning the prior occasion lottery system that biased previous performances that are dominated by males, just a few arguments emerged. One argument that has been made is the remark that girls, usually, are much less doubtless than males to join occasions that they don’t suppose they’ve an affordable probability of ending. Males, the reasoning continues, are more likely to throw warning to the wind and “ship it,” even in an occasion as notoriously tough as Hardrock, and even realizing that they might be unsuitably educated.
One other argument, alongside related traces, means that males could also be extra keen to just accept failure than ladies and, conversely, that girls try to keep away from failure because it tends to come back with a destructive social stigma that’s particular to ladies. Males, this line of argument goes on to say, are keen to danger failure for glory whereas ladies care far much less about exterior glory and extra about intrinsic satisfaction. Whereas these distinctions have been actually not the purpose of the modifications Hardrock has made over time, it’s fascinating to look at the outcomes of those modifications and what they might inform us about these of us who’ve discovered our manner into this excellent sport.
No matter your opinion is of why the ladies’s finisher charge was a lot larger than the lads’s at this yr’s Hardrock, one factor is evident — the ladies are right here to remain, and so long as the system continues to permit for the problem to be unfold throughout as many individuals as doable, we can have a rare laboratory by which to check what it takes to get this huge factor performed.
Bottoms up!
Becky Bates (proper) comes into the Telluride help station at mile 74.5 in rivalry for a top-10 end. She would go on to set a brand new age-group file for ladies aged 60 to 69. Picture: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
AJW’s Beer of the Week
This week’s beer of the week comes from the Ska Brewing Firm in Durango, Colorado. Pink Vapor Stew is a very distinctive beer marketed as a bitter ale with root veggies. Brewed with conventional bitter hops mixed with beets, carrots, ginger, and apples — it is a beer that must be tasted to be believed.
Name for Feedback
- Did you enter the lottery for this yr’s Hardrock 100? Is it in your bucket checklist?
- Are you able to see extra ladies getting concerned in ultrarunning at your native races too?
Claire Bannwarth (left) and Annie Hughes share early miles within the 2023 Hardrock 100. Picture: iRunFar/Eszter Horanyi
