The hardest thing to overcome is the cultural, religious and social restrictions in many countries.
This will continue to improve as women continue to run in public and as men become accustomed to seeing them. However, for thousands of years, women have been regarded as sex objects, and powerful women as threats, so look how far we have come in the last 50 years. The situation is not nearly as bad as it was in the 1960s and 1970s, but it’s a shame it exists at all. Do you believe the situation has improved for today's female runners? This empowerment through running has changed millions of women’s lives. There is a reason running is becoming a women’s sport: not because these women want to be Olympians, but because they want to be free. When you put one foot in front of the other, you get a sense of your own strength.
And that is what I decided to do with my life, to try to create opportunities and spread the word. I knew if they were offered an opportunity to try, they would respond. In the race, I kept wondering why other women didn’t run and then it dawned on me that they were afraid to try because they’d been told all these myths of limitation and believed them. How has that race shaped the course of your life? I could hold my own against the guys when we went long. When I was 19 and training really long for the first time, my coach and I realised that the longer the run, the better I was. It gave me such a sense of accomplishment. What gave you the confidence to run that day? In 2017, RW caught up with Switzer to talk more about how female running has changed. In 2015, she launched 261 Fearless, an initiative that uses running to empower women. She went on to run 39 marathons, winning the New York City Marathon in 1974, and led the campaign to get women official status in distance races. At mile two a race official, Jock Semple, tried to stop her, but Switzer went on to finish the race, crossing the line in 4hrs 20mins – and making history in the process. On April 19, 1967, 20-year-old Kathrine Switzer (bib number 261) lined up to run the Boston Marathon at a time when women weren’t permitted to compete.
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