Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to officially enter and run the Boston Marathon in 1967.*<\/p>\n
Now personally, I couldn’t care less about marathoning. And that goes double for the Boston event being run on Monday. I like running for cardio – I’ve been doing it for most of my adult life, in fact. But frankly, about 5 – 6 miles is my upper limit – past that point, boredom kicks in. And since I have nada to prove to myself, running a marathon ranks about minus 37 on my top 100 List of Things to Do.<\/p>\n
So why say “thanks” to someone who accomplished something I’m indifferent to?<\/p>\n
The reason\u00a0can be found in\u00a0Switzer’s story. Today, it’s no big deal for a woman to run a marathon if she wants to. But in 1967, things were very, very different. ESPN has a good overview:<\/a><\/p>\n Switzer, at the time a 19-year-old journalism major at Syracuse University, simply loved running. She had trained for months, even completing a 30-miler, to be sure she could finish. She and her coach, Arnie Briggs, had checked to see whether there were any rules prohibiting women from entering. There weren’t; in those days, the idea of women running the 26.2-mile distance was so foreign, the rulebook made no mention of them. So she entered the race using her initials, K.V. Switzer, as was her habit, and was issued No. 261.<\/p>\n “I thought K.V. Switzer was a very cool signature,” she said. “Like J.D. Salinger.”<\/p>\n Switzer, her boyfriend, Tom Miller, and Briggs were two miles into the marathon when officials tried to evict her from the course. Their tactics were terrifying. In a rage, race director Jock Semple came lunging at her. He got his hands on her shoulders and screamed “Give me those numbers and get the hell out of my race!” The wild look in his eyes still haunts Switzer. “Seeing that face scared the s— out of me,” she said.<\/p>\n Before Semple could rip off Switzer’s numbers, Miller, a 235-pound athlete (he was a football player and hammer thrower), laid a cross-body block on Semple, sending him to the side of the road in a heap. The entire sequence was captured on film by the press corps bus, riding just ahead of Switzer’s group.<\/p>\n Switzer kept running. Over the next 20 miles, she felt humiliated, then angry, then brushed it off. Semple was a product of his time, she thought. It was inconceivable to most men that women could run long distances without doing harm to themselves, their reproductive systems (a woman’s uterus might fall out, the thinking went) or their fragile psyches.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Basically, Switzer helped to\u00a0blaze a trail for women to participate in athletic activities that were deemed exclusive to men… and not back in my grandparents’ time either. This happened within MY lifetime (I was a very-aware\u00a010 year old\u00a0when Switzer ran Boston). When I was born (1957), serious people actually thought women were so fragile and\u00a0dim that they couldn’t even be allowed to choose<\/em> to participate in strenuous activities that would surely harm them (or rather, their reproductive potentials, the raison d’\u00eatre for a woman, doncha know). They were so convinced of this, that they were prepared, like Semple, to use coercion, if necessary, to keep women in their “place.”<\/p>\n So that’s why I’m grateful to Kathy Switzer, and the women (and their male allies) who came after her. While marathoning ain’t my “thing,” lifting weights surely is. And – if anything – lifting weights was\/is branded “male” even more strongly than marathoning. The welcoming vibe I experience in the gym is a testament to women like Switzer (such as powerlifter\u00a0Jan Todd<\/a>)\u00a0who bucked the system, and changed hearts and minds in the process. We’re all the better for it.<\/p>\n *Roberta Gibb also unofficially ran Boston in 1966 and again in 1967 (she finished well ahead of Switzer, too). Gibb, however, never actually entered the race or was given a number.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to officially enter and run the Boston Marathon in 1967.* Now personally, I couldn’t care less about marathoning. 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