Yeah, that bugged me a lot too. I guess that's what we'll be seeing as the response to the long history of medical research excluding women (and people of color, and children) entirely.

Assuming that demographically men tend to ride longer than women (if anything, I'd say the opposite, that the demographic of CYCLISTS is overwhelmingly male and white, but as the distance increases, so does the gender balance, to where the century riders are nearly 50-50 IME) - even assuming that, the solution still isn't to pick two groups that are not comparable to each other, but instead to pick a group of men who ride the SAME distance at whatever quicker pace concords with men's generally higher VO2Max and lean body mass.