Sorry about the confusing title, but I saw the results of the Kona Ironman, and it made me think about a question that I've never found an adequate answer to: Why is it that women are only slightly slower than men when it comes to endurance swimming, but not so close in the bike or run? Here are the results of this year's Kona Ironman: http://www.ironmanlive.com/assets/fi...nship/2006.pdf

Scroll down to pages 9 and 10. In the swim split, the fastest pro woman came in at the same time as the second fastest pro man! And even the 5th fastest pro woman's swim split was only about 1 minute slower than the fastest male pro swim split!

However, take a look at the bike and run splits. The men have the women beat by quite large margins. The fastest bike split for a pro woman is about 1/2 hour slower than the 5th fastest man. That's a pretty big margin. And in the marathon, none of the women even came close to breaking 3 hours, however, the top 5 pro men all ran sub-3 by pretty large margins.

What is it about swimming that differs from running and cycling? Is swimming less strength-based and more reliant on proper technique? I have no idea, but I have no doubt that many of you are much better informed than me.