It's kind of buried here, but Kelsey is the fastest human to do this. She beat the male record holder's time by 6 days.
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In endurance running, the longer races become, the more competitive they are for women. Women semi-regularly win multi-day and 100+ mile races, even if women don't have course records at these times/distances. In an event of sufficient time/distance, factors besides strength dominate the outcome.
So, (and knowing very little about rowing), I am not surprised that a woman could take the record here. You can only row so fast. Other factors like weather, currents, nutrition, mental fortitude, navigation, and boat design overcome muscle strength.
All that said: props to Kelsey Pfendler! She definitely knows how to embrace the suck.
Here's a nice diary of her trip:
https://www.kcra.com/article/kelsey-pfendler-record-breaking...
Love these updates:
> Day 21: Kelsey gave an update on a lesson learned about her mental state, saying she had beaten herself up for sleeping in. But she realized that wasn't productive thinking. "When you're out here, you're not in control," she said. "You are in control of you." She said she realized that the way to respond to problems is much more important than the problem itself.
> Day 44: Kelsey could see O'ahu as she closed in on her goal. "If any part of this made at least one person feel a little bit more powerful in their own skin, I couldn't ask for anything else and I'm happy," she said. "Think about trying to find your own big, hard, scary thing. You might not think that you are strong enough to finish it right now, but you're definitely strong enough to start it and you'll find everything else along the way."
I think you're confusing limited participation and what such a small group of people doing these events means for single individuals to "win" an event. Women are more like to win in these events then others because there is less competition overall so you get more anomalous results rather then the male biological differences stop dominating the outcome.
You are right in that "strength" isn't the dominating factor for these events or why males go so much faster/farther but rather VO2 max and for peak athletes males normally maintain a good 10% lead due to biological factors.
The male vs female 100 meter:
9.58 vs 10.49 = female record is 9.5% longer to run
Male vs female 200 meter:
19.19 vs 21.34 = female record is 11.2% longer to run
Male vs female 50km
2:38:43 vs 2:59:54 = female record is 13.35% longer to run
The difference also doesn't really change once we start going really long either
6 hour: 98.5km vs 85km male ran 15% farther
12 hour: 177.410 vs 153.600 male 15.5% farther
24 hour: 319.614 vs 278.621 male 14.7% farther
48 hour: 485.099 vs 436.371 male 11.17% farther
6 days: 1045.519 vs 928.577 male 12.6% farther
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon scroll down to the male vs female records.
I don't know why you brought up records, especially sub-ultra. I admitted that: "Women semi-regularly win multi-day and 100+ mile races, even if women don't have course records at these times/distances."
I've run dozens of marathons, multiple 100 milers, and several 12-hour and 24-hour events. You can be the strongest, most prepared person in the world, and it very much might not matter because of how many things can go south in such an event compared to shorter races.
Yes, these events have fewer participants, but nonetheless, even at the most of elite of these events, sometimes women win, and it's not always because the best man didn't show up that day. Big's Backyard Ultra attracts the best in the world, but it was won by a woman in 2019 and 2020.
> I don't know why you brought up records, especially sub-ultra.
To point out the performance difference is universal across all distances/speeds.
> and it very much might not matter because of how many things can go south in such an event compared to shorter races.
So your argument is now RNG plays a bigger role so eventually they'll score a win by luck?
> Yes, these events have fewer participants, but nonetheless, even at the most of elite of these events, sometimes women win, and it's not always because the best man didn't show up that day. Big's Backyard Ultra attracts the best in the world, but it was won by a woman in 2019 and 2020.
Are you arguing for me or against me with this line. That's basically a perfect example of the argument I used in my first paragraph.
I'm not trying to argue with you at all. I feel like you think I made some claim about women being stronger or faster than men, when I very specifically did not.
My only point was that women can sometimes win and/or set records at prestigious endurance events when factors other than strength/speed are relatively more likely to influence the outcome. Such as this record right here: rowing from CA to HI.
Obviously the more elite men in the competition, the less likely this is to occur. But I'm not talking about a small local 10K where a sub-elite woman happens to show up and there's no comparably competitive men and the woman wins overall. I mean events where men and women of comparable competitiveness show up, but a woman just outlasts a man that day due to grit or better preparation or better planning or whatever the factors happen to be. All I'm saying is: the longer events give women more opportunity to win those races, regardless of event size.
I have an acquaintance I've raced with a few times. I've got the better marathon time, but she's got the better 24-hour distance. It's cool that we can both have those wins. That's all.
It's not just RNG. Men are known to have more variance so top record holder can be a very different spread than the 10th best person of each gender.
> So your argument is now RNG plays a bigger role so eventually they'll score a win by luck?
Uh, no. His argument is that the ~10% or so superiority you're fighting so hard to claim is no longer enough to have dominate sway over the overall outcome. Other factors, not random.
The wiki you linked is "women" and "men" marathon. There is no "female" marathon!
And this differences are only possible because best women athletes are excluded!
>Other factors like weather, currents
I'd be interested to know how much progress she made/lost due to drifting overnight. I feel like that alone would have a drastic impact. It would really suck to check your GPS track in the morning to discover you'd lost a day's progress overnight.
I haven't read about the details, but a sea anchor can really put the breaks on. It also woulden't surprise me if they spent a a fair bit of effort doing weather routing, making course adjustments to take advantage of weather systems as they evolve.
Same with cycling. Earlier this year, in June, Leah Wilcox's attempt at setting the record for circumnavigating the globe by bike with support was interrupted by the heat wave that hit Europe. She already holds the record for the unsupported circumnavigation and as far as I know she was more or less on track of surpassing Mark Beaumont's record of 78 days and change.
It’s quite an accomplishment, but this is done rarely (https://oceanrowing.com/statistics lists less than a thousand completed rows world-wide), and the weather hugely affects how long it will take to do it.
Also, my geographical knowledge may be lacking, but it appears “to Hawaii” is essential here.
https://oceanrowing.com/filter?id=1415 shows a row from Monterey to Hanalei, Kauai in 32 days. That’s in the state of Hawaii, too, but about 200km closer.
This was only completed one other time by the male who was doing it for a fundraiser and not to set a record.
I'd just note that (1) Rob did set a record whether or not he meant to¹, and (2) Kelsey also did not intend to break the men's record.
¹https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/384202-fa...