Could men just... stop, please?

Maggie Mertens has been writing about women in sport for a while. With her new book, Better Faster Further, she contextualizes a consistently unfair history via the medium of running.

Raziq Rauf

Jun 13, 2024

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I promise I’m not trying to turn this newsletter into Book Club, but if you’re here, you clearly enjoy reading about running, so I figure this is in our shared wheelhouse. Here’s another important book that’s centered around running.

BETTER FASTER FARTHER: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women by
Maggie Mertens

I happened upon Maggie’s work not long ago, when she wrote about more and more young people running marathons to gain the feeling of having more control of their lives. The quarter-life crisis.

She asked if I’d be interested in reading her new book. I was 50/50 on covering it, though. I only feature one person every week, and if I interview every single author, I simply wouldn’t have space to write about all the other stuff I like to write about, but let me tell you right now that Better Faster Further is worth my time, and yours.

Become BFFs with Better Faster Farther by Maggie Mertens.

Split into seven chapters, the topics covered are clear, and delivered with an in-depth but enjoyable narrative. Maggie tells me that having the clear messages was helpful for her in terms of organizing the information while telling this huge historical story. Compiling all the information chronologically confirmed that there was a natural story to be told..

But Not More Than 100m… But Only White Women… But Not A Mile… But Definitely Not A Marathon… But Only If You Train Like A Man… But Only “Real” Women… What About the Long Run?

You get the vibe. You can see the progression. There’s always something else. As soon as a woman has broken one barrier, there’s always been something else for the powers that be to tell them that they can’t do. Just like world records, however, barriers are also there to be broken, and the stories are there to be told.

These stories are told with a delightfully withering tone, and imbued with a litany of historical facts and instances that should make you grimace and sigh. It kicks off with an introductory passage about how the first woman to complete the marathon at the Olympic Games was actually tricked by the powers that be into running it a day late because women were not allowed to such things back in 1896. They’re (literally) tales as old as time, but they’re not the ones that are told the most, and there’s a palpable feeling that Maggie Mertens is thoroughly sick of this sh*t.

“That was something I really wanted to get across. I feel very passionately about this topic and that it’s Meaningful. I think it can be really written off that this is just the way things are, that women athletes are just not worth as much or not on the same playing field as men are, and… it makes me angry.”

But everything’s WAY better in 2024, right??

It’s been 57 years since a woman was allowed to run the Boston Marathon without donning a top hat and fake mustache. Everything’s fixed! Sadly no.

“There's been so much money left on the table. For years, we've had these incredible athletes that have become household names, who are still paid far less than their male counterparts, but even this calendar year, you’re seeing a bit more. Some of that is because women athletes themselves are starting their own projects that are profitable and making money.”

I posit that a lot of the progress that we’re seeing in womens’ sports comes from a realization from the slow-turning ship of the boardroom. Big businesses are traditionally run by white men (don’t come for me - it’s still true). One problem with that is that female entrepreneurs outperform men, and diverse workforces outperform their more homogenous counterparts. My guess is that it might stem from a lack of understanding of the people they’re selling to.

Arsenal Women actually sold over 60,000 tickets for their 1-0 victory over their significantly less good North London neighbors, Tottenham Hotspur.

Take women’s soccer in the UK, for instance. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world.The US even has a term for it (Soccer Mom), such is its popularity among the best of us - kids. It’s the game that Maggie grew up playing.

My team in London, Arsenal F.C sells 60,000 tickets for every home game. After averaging 35,000 this past season, the Arsenal Women will be sharing a stadium with the men next season. Parity! The likelihood, however, is that the powers that be simply don’t want to miss out on all the concessions revenue.

“It's so heartening to me to see the Women's Super League capitalizing on the fan base that already exists, and that this is possible when we give them the stadiums that have the seats and the concessions that we can make money off of, and the jerseys we can make money off of. You're not gonna make that money if you don't put the products out there in the first place.”

The good news is that all the increased matchday revenues are profits, profits, profits to be reinvested into the game. Salaries will rise, facilities will improve, and in time, careers will seem viable. It might seem unsavory to bring every single thing back to the vulgarities of capitalism, but it’s the world in which we live. Understanding the processes can go a long way towards finding solutions.

I can draw a parallel with MLS. 30 years after this fair country hosted a magnificent World Cup, soccer in the USA is only now beginning to be seen as a truly viable career by youngsters. When I moved to the States in 2014, the base salary for a pro soccer player was about $50,000. If you’re good at sports, you were looking at a different sport, if not a different profession. Indeed, I recall one young-ish MLS player quitting his contract to start up a soccer-adjacent agency where he would double his income immediately. Playing sports for a job might have been his dream, but it just didn’t pay the rent.

How many untold talents have we lost from the womens’ game in the same way?

“That's part of why I wanted to tell kind of the history of exclusion. This book isn't just about biology and capability. If you're not told you can’t do something, or if it's not an attractive possibility, then why would we try?”

Do pregnant women have superpowers?

Yes, is the fun answer, but it’s not that easy. Last month, I read an interview with 800m runner Kate Grace, where she jokingly compared her training through pregnancy to the currently-very-fashionable Norwegian Double Threshold training (used by Jakob Ingebrigtsen, for instance), where you train hard without your heart rate rising above 85% - something pregnant people are advised against as well.

“I write in the book that one of the main reasons women were told for so long not to run, or not to run too far, too fast was this idea that their reproductive systems couldn't handle it.”

Maggie and I laugh at the absurdity of it, but it’s only been 17 years since it was headline news that the legend, Paula Radcliffe was running marathons after giving birth and even in the 21st Century, “it was considered a medical unknown.” As more women enter the science fields, more research on the postpartum body and its ability to perform is being undertaken, of course. For a variety of reasons, whether it be bias or lack of knowledge, men have traditionally not performed this research well enough, often enough, or thoroughly enough - the primary topic of Christine Yu’s book, Up To Speed, which I wrote about in April.

“The fact that there was so much unknown, and still is in such recent memories is pretty wild, so that’s another reason we can't fully accept what we think we know about women athletes and women runners.”

Some of that research has discovered an increase in red blood cells in pregnant women that can take some time to return to normal levels. There is - incredibly - a phenomenon of women returning from childbirth to faster times. Fingers are first pointed at competitive advantages, of course, but must we be so simplistic? Especially when there is also less readily acknowledged research about how harsh running can be on childbearing bodies.

“It also brings up this idea that human bodies are super complex. If they can support the extremely complex system of building another human being, and continue to do things like run marathons afterwards, what does that say? That's so incredible.”

It’s another book with Jasmin Paris in it!

Last week, I covered David Miller’s photojournal of the historic 2024 Barkley Marathons, where Jasmin Paris became the first woman to complete all five laps in the allotted time. The work with Jasmin for this book was completed long before that feat, of course, but it’s fitting that Better Faster Further ends with Britain’s latest star athlete.

Jasmin is another supermother, as well. The first time I read her name was in 2019, when she expressed milk during an 80-hour race. The Barkleys were not her first rodeo, but maybe the one that she wanted to conquer the most.

“I interviewed her right after she'd done the Barkley Marathons the first time and she was like, ‘I think I might try it again.’ She just really wanted to prove that dude wrong.”

Maggie is, of course, referring to Barkley Marathons impresario Lazarus Lake’s bold statement that a woman could never complete his race.

“I think we really want to hear these stories about women beating men. I think that really speaks to something inside of us, because we want to know the truth, right? We want to know that we're not all just our gender. We want to know that there are other possibilities, and I think she's proof of that.”

“She's just so inspiring. When I went to the Spine Race, almost all of the women that I met there started [ultrarunning] because they saw Jasmine doing it, and that's such a huge part of running culture in general.”

Do we really need another book about women in sport??

I’m afraid so, and we will for a while. Everything is better in 2024 - that’s certainly worth acknowledging - but it’s far from perfect.

In my liberal/progressive social bubble, I do sometimes consider the need to say some of this stuff out loud. Surely everyone’s on board by now?

During our conversation, however, I recall talking to one of my correct-thinking friends, and being slightly shocked at the gap in understanding of women’s issues between him and I. There was no malice - he just had no clue. Maggie confirms.

“You go out into the world, and there are reminders that we really do need this. Getting these ideas out in the world is really important.”

“I do think it's really important to change the way that we talk about women athletes, because I don't think we're gonna get closer to gender equality in the world if we're still treating women's physical capabilities and bodies as a lower class. I just don't think it's going to work.”

“Which does bring it back to why things like paying women athletes the same is really important. We act like this is the result of some kind of biological inferiority, when really it's baked into this discriminatory system, and the things that we've chosen to uplift or market or invest in over time, and what we haven't.”

It’s all confirmation that we’re not there yet. Every time we are able to celebrate a women’s team playing in the same stadium as their male counterparts, or a female athlete completing a course for the first time, it should also be a stark reminder that it’s only happened once so far.

Let’s celebrate again, properly once it’s completely normal. Until then, let’s enjoy sharing books like Better Faster Further that continue to push the conversation in the correct direction.

Links & further reading

You can pre-order Better Faster Further right now, and I recommend that you do it via Bookshop.org rather than the other places.

Maggie on the quarter-life crisis [The Atlantic]
About businesses [USNews] [Forbes]
Kate Grace comeback interview [Citius]
The Norwegian Method [Outside]
Giving Birth and Running Faster [Victory Press]
Jasmin Paris nursing and running [BBC]
About Arsenal Women [Blog]

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