A 13 minute difference in a 26 mile race is not near as big as a 24 second difference in the 1500m. 24 seconds is at least 200m for an Olympic class 1500m man to be behind. In fact men could run what a 3:50 1500m since 1917, and i know many many, mid tier college men that can run near 3:50s. When you take pure physical explosive ability out and replace it only with pacing and energy metabolism, you're leveling the playing field a lot. Of course, most the people here are meatheads and have never actually ran 12 miles in one go. It's not based on pure times, and herp derp, 24 seconds is smaller than 13 minutes. 13 minutes is not a huge difference in time in a marathon. 2:03 pace is 4:36 avg pace, 2:15 pace is 5:06. Only a 30 second difference per mile. If a man were to average 4:42, he would end up at 2:05. The fact that women can actually hold a better average behind men in a marathon than the 24 second difference in a 1500m shows that they do gain ground in longer distances. A 30 second average behind men over 26 miles, is more impressive than

Of course the times are going to be unbalanced. there will always be less, and less motivated, women to run marathons in their peak performance. The only gender difference at play is energy metabolism and since energy metabolism is all based on their mother's mitochondrial dna it's pretty much a level playing field here, muscle/bone structure, and recovery ability that really depends on the person and not the gender, though males do have an advantage but all of these athletes dope anyway.

And You can't say the times speak for themselves as there are physical differences at play. All you can do is judge how they compete against men at explosive and endurance events, and they hold up better in competition in long endurance events, because as i said before, a 30 second slower average mile, is more impressive than a 24 second difference in WR 1500 times.