"Just as people told women that we’d never be able to have children if we ran, people said that once you were over 40, you were risking premature death or serious injury if you trained hard, and implied that it was somehow undignified for older people to run."
Kathrine Switzer from her new book, Marathon Woman, available end of April 2007.
The 2007 NYRRC More Marathon, a race for women ages 40 and over, was an excellent example of how far women’s running has come in 40 years and why Kathrine Switzer’s pioneering actions were a major factor. In 1967 Kathrine, having registered as KV Switzer, ran the men’s-only race wearing an official bib number and was attacked and “man”-handled during the run by enraged race official Jock Semple. Thus Kathrine’s Boston journey became as famous to runners as the journey of Paul Revere.
Kathrine was one of the guests on the expert panel at the More Health & Wellness Expo the day before the 2007 marathon. Other panel members were More Magazine health director Stephanie Young, nutritionist Lauren Antonucci, celebrity trainer Valerie Waters, and running legends Lynn Jennings and Greta Waitz.
During the panel discussion, Kathrine said, “The next great barrier is aging. I look around this room, and the women look nothing like my mother looked at her age, to say nothing of my grandmother [at the same age]. We are a whole different breed. And the difference is now we are realizing that exercise is just fine and wonderful, perhaps a fountain of youth as we get older. The situation, though, is that we need an opportunity, and More Magazine has created that opportunity. You all saw the movie Field of Dreams, and remember he said, ‘Build it, and they will come’? Well, More is building it, and we are coming.” [Applause]
Yet, to get to this point, there had been a cost that the early women runners paid, both mentally and physically. For example, Kathrine had been banned by the AAU for some time after the 1967 Boston Marathon because, among other reasons, as Kathrine states in her book Marathon Woman, she “had run a distance of more than one and a half miles, which was ‘the longest distance allowable for women’”, and she had “run the Boston Marathon without a chaperone.”
After the panel discussion, Kathrine talked with my spouse, Lynne, and me about some of the physical costs involved in breaking down the sexual running barriers.
|
Kathrine |
You’ve got to buy the book to get the real story. [Laughs] But in 1976, I got such terrible blisters that the podiatrist said, ‘Listen, we have to take these right down. You are going to have to give it a month to 6 weeks to heal.’ And so, I had been getting in great, great shape, but then other opportunities were coming up while I was waiting for my feet to heal, so suddenly I was giving proposals to Avon, and I was doing all these different other things. Already the idea of organizing races had become more important to me than my own running. But that was the thing that flipped the switch. That was how it began, with the blisters. By the time they healed, I already was doing other stuff. It took me so long to get back into shape, that I had really kind of lost interest in being a competitor. I was more interested in being a corporate executive at that point in time. |
|
Lynne |
Where were the blisters? |
|
Kathrine |
All over and between every toe. The arches were just terrible. And I had very bad bunions, as you can see. They were all under the calluses, so they puffed the toes. The toes had jammed in the end of the shoes, so the blood was under the nails. All of them had to be drilled… I talk about the taping in the morning and the issues if the tape is not perfect. I taped them like a surgeon. If the tape was slightly wrong, or if there was a wrinkle, then I was finished because I would get such a bad blister from it. What we went through! The price we paid! |
|
Bob |
Where are your books being sold? |
|
Kathrine |
The books will be in book stores everywhere in late April. However, the New York Road Runners club is very shrewd. They have a hundred advance copies here at the Expo. |
I could not bypass a chance to be one of the first people to read her book, so I bought a copy. I must warn you though, the book is impossible to put down. That evening I read 160 pages. Besides being a memoir, it is an excellent history lesson of the obstacles Kathrine and other women had to overcome to be taken seriously as long-distance runners. The results of these women’s efforts could be demonstrated this day by the large number of women over 40 who had signed up for the More Marathon, and, more importantly, how normal that was.
While at the Expo, Lynne met Jean from Texas. Jean and her husband had quit smoking 20 years ago, and they now are marathoners. Jean had wanted to run the More Marathon for a long time, and as soon as she turned 40, she made reservations to come. The More Marathon would be her 7th marathon. Lynne told her, “You know, the marathon is 5 loops in Central Park, and you can run the half marathon with a partner.” She replied, “Yes, but I’ve never been in New York before, so I am doing it all!”
Jean was born the year Kathrine broke the sex barrier at Boston, and now it was so natural for Jean to want to run a marathon at 40 years of age. Not only has the question about women competing in marathons been laid to rest, but also that it is not an issue for women over 40 to run.
The next day, in perfect running conditions, Susan Loken, 43, of Phoenix, AZ won the More Marathon in a time of 2:47:52. The half marathon was won by Lyubov Denisova, 35, in a time of 1:16:49. The first 40-and-over half marathon finisher was Trina Painter, 40, of Flagstaff, AZ in 3rd place in a time of 1:19:10. Just as noteworthy, there were over 4,600 finishers of the marathon and half marathon.
On the train back to Poughkeepsie, Lynne and I met our friend Sally Saretto, who had run the marathon as a warm-up for the upcoming Boston Marathon. She reminisced about what it was like being a woman running in the late 1970’s.
|
Sally |
I ran the Marine Corps Marathon in 1978 and 1979. I was surprised to find out that that was before the women’s marathon became an Olympic sport, which was in 1984. Nowadays the Marine Corps Marathon field is 30 to 40 percent women. In that day, there were 6,000 total runners, 500 of them were women. I finished 51st; I ran a 3:46. I still have the 2 shirts, and they still fit me! |
|
Bob |
Why did you start running back then? |
|
Sally |
When I got out of graduate school, I needed something to fill my evenings after work. A friend of mine started running, so I started running with him. I got into a group that did marathoning. I was the only woman; they were all men. It was a natural thing for me. The maximum I ever trained was 40 to 50 miles a week, even in those days. The important thing is put in the long mileage, so your body knows what that feels like. You have to run those 18- and 20-milers. I did that. The first year I really trained hard. The second year I met my husband. I don’t think I ran any longer than 5 miles. I didn’t run any long ones. I went back to Marine Corps, and I ran a 4:08 with no training. [Laughs] Then I took 10 years off from running, I had my son. I had jobs where I had to get up really early and come home really late. I guess I got away from it. I still exercised, but I didn’t run. But then in the early 1990’s, I had a life-changing conversation with one of my employees. He asked me if I was pregnant. And I wasn’t! I thought, ‘Well, what are you doing to yourself? This is not what you want to do.’ You know, I owe that guy a lot of gratitude, because I started walking, I started running, and here I am.” |
So here we are, 40 years after Kathrine’s famous run that was heard around the world, with thousands of women over 40 running the More Marathon and enjoying life. It is a living testament to the legacy of Kathrine and other early women running pioneers such as Nina Kucsik, Sara Mae Berman, and Elaine Pederson. Their actions in the face of intense hostility greatly benefited the legions of women runners who came later. The runners at the More Marathon showed that it is dignified for women of any age to run.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |