Male competitors often receive a base salary or sponsorship deals that allow them to train the majority of the time. Female endurance athletes, on the other hand, often get paid a fraction as much and have to find ways to supplement their income. To help change that situation, Bertine directed a feature documentary in 2014 called “Half the Road,” which explored the issues and inequalities in women’s cycling.

In the marathon, top women ­finishers are about 15 minutes slower than the top men. But the growing number of standout performances by women in ultra-distance events has athletes, coaches, and researchers believing that ­women may still be far from achieving their full ­potential as athletes.

Livingston first applied to become a wildland firefighter in 1979, when she was 18. Her friends and family tried to talk her out of it, citing the dangerous nature of the job, her diminutive size, and, of course, her gender. Today many would-be women firefighters face the same skepticism. Livingston retired from the force in August, but the work she did to make firefighting more accessible to women continues to positively impact the entire community.

In October, a flyer for Montana Snowbowl was posted at five breweries and one college campus in Missoula. “Dear extra body FAT,” it read. “You have two options: make your way into my BOOBS or get the F-OUT.” Capitalization, theirs. Swishy feminine handwriting font, theirs. Indignation, pretty much everyone else’s.

“Why more for the women?” race organizer Jim Skaggs wrote in the e-mail. “Women typically get paid 80% of what men do in this country, for the same work. This is my little effort to make up for that shortfall. If you have issues with that, I’ll be happy to discuss them with you.”

Since the passage of Title IX in 1972, the number of women participating in sports has skyrocketed, increasing 560 percent at the college level, yet women continue to be underrepresented in exercise science research—both as participants in general studies and as the specific subject of scientific inquiry—creating huge gaps in knowledge about female physiology and performance.

When it comes to prize money, many sports have reached parity—as high as 83 percent, according to one BBC Sport survey. But prize money isn’t the whole story, and because it’s a public-facing number, organizations have a considerable PR incentive to make purses equal. Harder-to-quantify issues like salaries, sponsorships, representation, and opportunities often still lag behind for women athletes.

Women are crushing it right now in pro running. But when you look at their coaches, they’re mostly men. Nearly all the coaches of the best U.S. runners are male. It’s not an issue that’s often discussed, but the pattern has prompted some curiosity about why more women aren’t taking coaching positions—and how the culture and dynamics in the sport might shift if they did.