Absconding..

For a variety of reasons, I have been unable to do any running this week- a rather hectic schedule not helping matters any. However, today I raised the issue of female leaders in my class. I showed students my cool site with the pictures of many female leaders of countries, and asked them why the U.S. did not have any so far. Of course this is a complex issue, but a serious issue as well. I was reminded of the interview Paula Radcliffe gave some time ago..

Paula Radcliffe bemoans men running scared.
Owen Slot, Chief Sports Reporter.
Male distance runners in this country have a weaker mentality than their female counterparts, they are scared of having their egos bruised by testing themselves against top competition and are more likely to “bottle out” in poor conditions. Two days before another London Marathon in which no Briton is likely to challenge in the men's elite race, this is the view of Paula Radcliffe, the women's world record-holder.

In an interview with Spikes magazine, Radcliffe said that many male athletes are psyched out before they have even got to elite level. “A lot of it is about the mental outlook of the athlete,” she said. “The youngsters coming through now in male middle- distance are in an era where they're being told, 'We haven't got anyone as good as Coe, Cram or Ovett.' So they never think they're going to be able to live up to that.”

Radcliffe also said that, in the United Kingdom, “our squad development and group training mentality fell apart” and that female runners were far better equipped to cope than the men. “Men in particular need that more than women,” she said. “Women will either be able to get themselves together in a group or they will go out and hammer it in training.

“In my experience, women can train more closely to their maximum on their own for more sessions in the week than men. It's just the way the physiology is. By putting men in a squad, you force them to push a little bit harder and train a little bit harder.”

However, she said simultaneously that the male elite “avoid” each other in training and are scared to leave the comfort zone of their local training groups to pit themselves in training against their peers. She added that their mentality is, “‘We're not going to train together because it might hurt my ego.' That doesn't help, either.”

And in a withering assessment of the psyche of male runners in general, she said: “Women are generally better organised and more consistent. You might see the guys start off a bit faster and probably running at a quicker pace, but they're fair-weather runners. If the rain or snow comes in, the guys are going to bottle out.”

Radcliffe also suggested that attitudes at the elite level are too soft on the young talent of both genders. “The whole country went through this phase of thinking, 'Oh, you shouldn't give it all in training anyway, you shouldn't train too hard, you can overtrain,'” she said. “They are competing against people who were out there being the best in the world and winning world championships already at 20, 21, and yet we're saying, 'They're only just under 23.'

“We're creating a whole new extra age group to ease that transition, when really we need to almost be throwing people in and getting them aware of what they're doing.”