Better Faster Farther Quotes

“Women and girl runners, from Mary Decker to Mary Cane, have been kept small and weak and injury prone, because we have assumed that is what it means to be a woman runner in a man's world. But when we think about how much the smallness, weakness and injuries could be due to the environment women and girls live in, and not their own bodies, then the question becomes, "how can we know for sure what it means to be a woman runner at all?”
― Maggie Mertens, Better Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women

“But in that ferocity in seeking answers about what makes women different from the status quo athlete, men, a false wall has been constructed: "we need this because we are SO different". Some researchers worry that pushing too hard to find differences in female athletes will spread the message that women and men are not just variations on a theme, but different species entirely. So some are developing a nuanced theory. That while cisgender women have various physiological differences from cisgender men, physiology isn't the biggest driver of gender difference in sport. Our culture is.”
― Maggie Mertens, Better Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women