And not just mental "strength". The physical demands speak of a very high fitness, both for this ride and generally.pwa wrote: 16 May 2025, 7:57pm Having dabbled at Audax I know how hard it is to keep going when tiredness and all the aches and pains set in, so the idea of ploughing on at a rate of nearly 500km per day, for five and a bit days is just a testament to a kind of mental strength and determination most of us could not manage. Truly impressive.
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For some years now I've thought that its just another effect of centuries of patriarchy (still around in large dollops) that assumes women are somehow not able to do a whole range of things that "only men are tough enough (or clever enough) to do". I think that's not true except as an effect of the centuries of patriarchy preventing women from training for, attempting and achieving all sorts.
In the last 20 years I've seen many road races and time trials in which women not only do as well as men but sometimes come out "the best". If various organisations, institutions and other artificial socio-cultural barriers were dismantled so that, for instance, women could ride in the main TdeF I feel there'd be a good chance that a woman would eventually become "the best".
The patriarchy assume that a brute strength of the testosterone-induced variety is the only relevant factor in so many human activities, including various forms of cycling. This is tosh, really, as this lady's feat at the this particular record shows. There are many factors involved in winning a road race on a bike; and in many other activities supposedly only do-able to a certain level by man-brutes.
