It seems as if you're saying that you performed better when you decided to focus on giving your best performance regardless of who you were up against. And I think this is a great point. But trying to expand this to sports in general is an enormous mistake unless your goal is to not diminish, but entirely remove women from high profile positions in the sports world.

Ten minutes (actually 13 minutes) is a huge margin in a marathon when you consider that these people are already performing at their peak. For comparison, it's taken 55 years for the men's world record to decrease by that amount, even with all of the technological and training improvements there have been in that time. And long distance running is the field where the gap between men and women is by far the smallest.

Even in sports where they divide by weight class like boxing or MMA, men and women compete separately because everyone there is at or near the top of their field. This is where your statement about the fastest woman being faster than the slowest man or the strongest woman being stronger than the weakest man falls down. You're right. But it doesn't matter because only the fastest and strongest men are competing in top level sport.

The truth is that the 100th fastest man is faster than the fastest woman. The same is true of every event that prioritises strength or speed or power. This isn't a comment on value or worth, just a fact. A positive attitude isn't going to fix it. And frankly, I'd rather see women competing in the women's 100m finals or the women's Wimbledon finals than never getting to the televised stages of the mens. I think women who make a living from competing prefer it that way too.