April 16, 2012 • 30 mins
On April 16th, 1972, women were finally allowed to run in the Boston Marathon. (Amateur rules prohibited women from running until research proved that it wouldn't ruin their wombs.) Join Caroline and Cristen as they take a look at women and marathons.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From how Stuff Works dot com, Hello and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And before we
(00:20):
go any further, this episode on women and marathon's is
owed to a listener Scott Perry in Calgary, this one's
for you. Scott Perry sent us an email saying, Hey, gals,
guess what The Boston Marathon is rolling around April sixteen
and it marks the fort anniversary of women being officially
(00:44):
allowed to run in it. And so I forwarded the
email to Caroline and said, Hey, Caroline, you know it's awesome.
We have a fantastic listener named Scott who has fantastic
idea about running. And then we talked about Scott for
a while and how smart he was. Yeah, we were
actually we were going to do the podcast originally on Scott,
just about Scott, but we thought that could get creepy. Yes,
(01:04):
Facebook profile was private, so we decided to go with
Boston Marathon's a broader topic. Um, and I'll kick things
off with a little marathon anecdote while I do jog
um a couple of times a week. If I'm being good,
I try to do it at least a couple of
times a week. I'm not really a long distance runner.
(01:26):
The only long distance marathon I have ever participated in
was the Peachtree road Race, which is one of the
largest tin caves in the world. There's something like fifty
five thousand participants who run right past our building in fact,
here in Atlanta, Georgia. And a few years ago, my
(01:47):
then boyfriend and I decided that we wanted to run
the road race. It was the fourth of July. It
would be something kind of fun to do together. They're
all these people. I was a recent um transplant to Atlanta,
so we didn't really think about the fact that, hey,
this spur of the moment idea means that we didn't
(02:07):
have a number, and we didn't realize that that. We
We thought, like, you know, you could just you could
just sort of jump on the course if you just
run it. Uh, there were so many other people who
did have numbers. Would two people without a number really
make a difference. So we took Marta the public transit
(02:27):
down to the start of the race. The swarms of people.
It was at the break of dawn. It was very eerie.
It was actually kind of like zombie land here because
there were just people walking around and sort of next
to nothing and running gear while the sun was rising.
And ran into Sarah from stuff he missed in history class,
(02:48):
who of course had a number like a proper a
proper participant, and she immediately and gently informed us that
we might want to watch our acts and keep a
little profile because we really should not be on the
course without numbers. Will you get thrown off? Yeah, there
(03:08):
are people on their watching to see um if you
have a number or not. Well, is it is it
to protect against like crazy people doing crazy stunts or
is it just like there's already so many people there.
We don't want unregistered runners. There are already so many
people there, and especially for the really serious runners to
go first or those time trials that they have to
compete in other marathons, so you don't want random folks
(03:29):
just mucking up the race course. But the good news
is good news for me anyway, is that my boyfriend
and I were able to run it anyway. And my
favorite part was passing by a Catholic church where priests
was throwing out holy water on the runners, so I
like dodged over and got sprinkled, and I really think
(03:52):
that it helped me cross the finish line good. And
you didn't melt or anything. I did not melt, even
though I'm not Catholic, so hey, anything helps when you're
running that long. I I I am a very loose jogger.
I jogged sometimes when I feel like it. I get
into periods of jogging. That's about it. I'm imagining you
(04:14):
like running without using your arms for some reason, that's
my my image of loose jogging flailing your shoulders. Well,
you know, I thought it was funny that you mentioned
that you and your boyfriend just like jumped in, because well,
it's not funny because that's how women had to run
marathons at first, because they just they weren't allowed. Like
(04:36):
flat out women were not allowed to register for marathons.
I mean they could run, they could do what you
guys did, and you know, be unofficial participants and not
have their time count or anything, but they were not welcome. Yeah.
The thing is I was merely following in the footsteps
of women like ROBERTA. Gibb and Catherine Switzer in the
(04:59):
Boston Mayor Marathon. Um, and since we kicked things off
talking about the Boston Marathon, we should go ahead and
mentioned that this race has been going on since eighteen
nine seven and two thousand twelve were only at the
fort anniversary of women being officially allowed to run. And
like you hinted at earlier, Caroline, there were women who
(05:23):
jumped into the phrase secretly in the Boston Marathon in
nineteen sixty six. The first known woman to do this
was ROBERTA. Gibb, who had applied to running the Boston Marathon,
but her application was rejected because women were not According
to the official rules of amateur running at the time,
women were not allowed to run that far, which is
(05:46):
a marathon. We should go ahead and say is twenty
six point two miles? Which makes me tired? Just about yeah,
I have no design. I see people running. I know
I have friends who just ran a half marathon. My
roommate was part to that. He came home and I
don't think he moved. I think you're flailing arms and shoulders.
Would be very tired by the end of that. I
(06:08):
would throw something out of his socket. They would um.
But GiB wasn't trying to make a statement, She wasn't
trying to break down barriers. She just wanted to run.
She was a twenty three year old young Navy wife
and um she had watched the race in nineteen sixty
four and pointed out that all she saw was people.
She didn't take note of the fact that there were
(06:28):
no women running. She just thought it was neat. She
liked the type of people who participated, and so she
wanted to get involved also, so in nineteen sixty six
she she she goes to Boston and kind of hangs
out on the sidelines like, oh, no, I'm just me. No,
I'm just wearing shorts because it's March or April in Boston,
(06:51):
you know, no, no problem. And she ended up jumping
in as the runners came by. And there's a little
bit of controversy about where she actually jumped in, whether
or not she and the entire course, or if she
jumped in a little less conspicuous spot more than the
in the middle of the marathon. But nevertheless, she crossed
the finish line, ended up getting a time of three hours,
(07:11):
twenty one minutes forty seconds and finished not too bad
out of five hundred. But the next year, Katherine Switzer
enters the race. And this is the story that has
been circulating around blogs as this year as the Boston
Marathon approaches, because there is photographic evidence of the race organizer,
(07:36):
one of the organizers, Jocks Simple, trying to push Switzer
off the race course, like literally literally off there, pushing
her off physically. Um. She ended up getting into the
race officially by applying as k V Switzer, but she
claims she's a little sneaky about this. She claims that, oh, well,
(07:57):
you know, I was just I was using my initial
just in day to day business. But she also knew
that if she registered as Catherine she would not be
allowed to run, right, And she managed to avoid the
pre race physical too by saying that she'd been cleared earlier,
so she had a plan. She knew it was, She
knew what was going on. And if you've seen pictures
(08:18):
at all, if you follow any news about the race
or know anything about running history, there a lot of
pictures circulating now too of that of that period where
this Jock Simple guy, this crotchety old Scottish man tried
to push her out of the race, and you can
see where Tom Miller, Switzer's boyfriend at the time, who
was a football player and a big dude, just like
totally body checked it and pushed him off the off
(08:43):
of his girlfriend. Well, the photos are somewhat disturbing because
what had happened was that as she was running the race,
the the media that was they had media trucks that
were tracking the people running, and there was word that
spread that there was a woman running. She's running along
in this with a number, with a number it is important,
(09:04):
with a kind of a floppy sweatsuit on, and so
they start taking pictures of her, and this catches Jock
simples attention, and some of the media people start heckling
Jock Simple, saying, hey, look, there's a there's a woman
running in your race. And he was just incensed, specifically
the fact that she had a number, and according to Switzer,
(09:26):
he grabbed her and said, get the hell out of
my race and give me those numbers. But like you said,
her football boyfriend basically just tackled him, got him out
of the way, and she kept running across the finish
line with the time of four twenty yeah, which she
admits is not the best time, but She said that
(09:46):
she was determined to finish the race on her hands
and knees, that she had to just approve that a
woman could because she realized at that time how important
this whole thing was. If she was like being physically
pushed out of the race by of its organizers, she
just realized how important it was that her participation be visible. Yeah.
Sports Illustrated interviewed Jock Simple a couple of years after
(10:09):
this incident, and he was completely unapologetic. He claimed that,
you know, he was not motivated so much by getting
a woman off the track, but as an unauthorized number
holder to make up a phrase. Well, Switzer actually endured
a lot of criticism for her hobby, which is running
(10:31):
um back in nineteen sixty six, the year before the marathon,
when she was training at Lynchburg College in Virginia, that
you know, after the whole roberta GiB thing that had
attracted the attention of the Associated Press who ran an article.
And after the article ran, Switzer got a letter saying
that God will strike you dead if she tried to run. Yeah. Well,
being a runner because she was training with the men's team,
(10:53):
and so this attracted all sorts of negative attention. And
I just can't I just can't imagine thinking that running
with men as a woman is enough to get me
struck down, smited, smoked, might be smoked, struck by lightning.
I do think we should clarify that that. Switzer said
that the negative attention at the time was not coming
(11:15):
from the other male runners. The guys were fine with
her running alongside them and probably thought it was cool.
But she said that the real negativity came from race
organizers and the media and athletic associations that were cleaning
to this notion that running long distances was bad for women. Bad.
(11:38):
And when I say bad, I mean physically bad. Um.
And we should talk about a little bit earlier in
the history of running, and especially in the Olympics, that
because of poor coaching styles, when women would run longer races,
like there was a half mile in the Olympics and
a number of women who compete, then it actually collapsed
(12:01):
before they crossed the finish line because they were exerting
so much energy at the outset they were completely exhausted
by the end. Yeah, And there was just this general
belief that any long distance running put too much of
a strain on women. It interfered with their ability to
get pregnant and have children, so that it would it
would hurt your uterus to run well. And that was
also connected with, um, some female runners complaining of irregular periods,
(12:25):
so doctors assumed that by extension, if you're running a
lot your periods are irregular, you must be damaging your uterus,
and by God, you won't be able to have children.
Right um. The website Run like a Girl film dot com.
It's a it's it's based on the film Run Like
a Girl. That's pretty self explanatory, right um. And they
have a lot of running history on their website and uh.
(12:47):
In women were allowed to compete in the Olympic track
and field events, but because of their exhausted condition at
the end of the eight hundred final, the event was
dropped until nineteen sixty. So apparently they looked so shabby
at the end that people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
how is your uterus? Do you need to sit down?
Maybe we shouldn't do this, don't run so far. And
(13:10):
because of that, women were certainly barred from running twenty
six point two miles, which is the official length of
a Marathon. But once Switzer competed um then in nineteen
sixty nine, and a lot of this does happen. These
barriers are being broken. At the Boston Marathon. We have
Cambridge native Seami Burman who won in the women's division,
(13:36):
but this was unofficial because women had not yet been invited. Yeah,
in nineteen seventy, Berman finished with a strong time of
three hours, five minutes and seven seconds, at which point
a reporter asked why did you do it? And at
the time she was steeming like, are you kidding me?
I just got this incredible time, and I ran and
I did great, and your your question for me is
(13:58):
why did I do it? And she just said that
they were just so patronizing, the reporters, the observers of
the race. But now her attitude has changed a little
bit about why they asked that question. Yeah, she talks
a lot about how the headlines of the time would
be like housewife running. There was always this had to
be this juxtaposition of some kind of stereotypically, you know,
(14:20):
feminine occupation with what at the time was a masculine
pursuit of running, even though today women comprise I think
it's fifty of competitors in road races UM. And then
in nineteen seventy two the Boston Marathon finally UM officially
(14:40):
invites women to enter, and Nina Kusick wins for the women.
And this is a funny little tidbit. Katherine Switzer ends
up getting third in the women's but her trophy was broken.
And when Jack Simple, the curmudgeon le scott It presents
her with this broken trophy, said that she deserved it broken. Yep.
(15:02):
He said that he'd been mad at her for years,
that five years. That Jock Simple holds a grudge, he does,
and he I there was an article that basically our
interview with him a couple of years later where he
basically was like, yeah, I'm mad about it. Still he
wasn't he wasn't gonna let it go. Well, if you
look at the photos of him when he's trying to
push her off the track, there he has a crazed
(15:25):
look in his eye, and when he's talking about that,
it seems like because of that photographic evidence, perhaps the
sting was a little bit sharper. Yeah. Katheryn Switzer in
one interview did talk about how you could when her
boyfriend hit him, you could you could hear like his
body being shoved aside, like the hit was so hard.
(15:47):
So maybe his maybe his pride was hurt in addition
to his body when that happened. So in nineteen seventy two,
the Boston Marathon opens up to women, but the Olympics
did not open up a women's marathon until the l
A Games in nineteen eighty four, and they were still
(16:07):
hung up. The i o C, the International Olympic Committee,
was still hung up on that idea that running a
long distance would injure women and especially their ability to
have children. UM, but several studies would emerge, especially from
an Atlanta physiologist, David Martin at Georgia State University, who
found that UM, women's long distance running was just fine
(16:33):
for them, and because of the way the female body
stores fat, there was this notion that we might actually
be better equipped for long distance running compared to men.
And research like that was really crucial and convincing the
i o C to allow women to run. I mean,
it's I think it's interesting that this body, this governing organization,
had to be really convinced that women could participate. Well,
(16:56):
I mean, we could, we could spin in a positive
light and say, well that it's good that they were
looking out for what at the time was maybe the
best for women if there was if if medical knowledge
had not figured out what was going on inside of
women's bodies, and maybe they just thought women really weren't
capable of it. Yeah, but I mean as training. As
(17:18):
training has improved, women have obviously shown that they're capable
of achieving good times and marathons and not passing out.
But here is the question, when it comes to men
running women running, will we ever catch up to the guys?
Not exactly. There's a Time magazine article from two thousand
(17:41):
and eight where Tim Noakes, a professor of exercise and
sports science at the University of Cape Town, not that
whole fat store theory. You know that women have more
fuel to propel them in a in a long long
distance race. Um. He says that there is a lot
to do with Wait when compare ring men and women
and testosterone and muscle. Yes, if you um, if you
(18:05):
compare male and female just recreational runners, not people who
would be competing in the Olympics, the guys are about
twenty two pounds heavier than the women. So if you
look at wreck runners. That fat store idea might hold
some more sway because women are lighter and they have
these longer term energy stores, whereas men with higher muscle
(18:28):
mass can burn calories quicker. But it's for those those short,
shorter bursts of energy. But Noakes says that the world
record marathon runners of each gender are very close in weight.
I mean, if you look at those runners, they are
paired down to there's not any single ounce of body
fat on them. And he says, um that if you
don't match for weight, then yeah, women get the advantage,
(18:49):
but once you match for weight, men still run about
ten percent faster. And it has to do with higher
levels of testosterone that builds the muscle that gets your
foot off the ground as quickly as possible. Right, So
he's basically saying, you know, when you look at just
a general group of runners, whether it's in a marathon
or a five k or whatever, Um, a woman running
(19:14):
next to a bigger man is going to be able
to move that mass around faster because she's lighter, so
she might get a better time. But when you when
you have runners of about the same weight a man
and a woman, the man will propel himself faster. Yeah,
from any distance between a hundred meters and a thousand kilometers,
women are consistently nine to eleven percent slower than men,
(19:39):
So chances are women are not going to catch up
to men on the race. But that does not mean
that women have not been getting faster times right. A
two thousand Duke study looked at women's increasing participation and
they're increasing speed both in running and in swimming. And
they point out that before the seventies, few women been
(20:00):
ran for recreation and amateur regulations on competitive racing barred
them from distances longer than four kilometers, which we've touched on,
and they have found that as women's participation in sports,
not just running, has dramatically increased over the past century,
the disparities and performance have decreased because women are being
trained better than they were in the past. But nevertheless
(20:23):
you still see a pretty big gender gap. They point
out that the women's hundred meter world records um and
this was back in the year two thousands, so that
might have been broken since then, but they say that
it's about the same as the men's record for a
hundred meters that seventy five years earlier. But I mean. Nevertheless,
if you chart the UM world records of men's running
(20:48):
versus women's running, women's times have decreased at a faster
rate in the past forty years, and men's just because
our participation has increased exponentially compared to them, because we
were not previously allowed to run very far. Yeah, and
talking about participation, we should probably look at why people
are participating, uh, and competing in these in these crazy
(21:12):
races that I won't even watch because they exhaust me.
Why would you want to run twenty six miles. It's
like that Brian Reagan but where he's talking about like
all those iron Man type competitions and he's like, sure,
you don't have to do this. I always want to
say that to runners, like you don't. You can come
inside and have a sandwich. I can just drive you. Uh,
it's on my way. Yeah, that's gonna be a short drive,
(21:35):
like twenty minutes. UM study looked at people's motivations for
running their first marathons and found that there are some
common reasons for men and women, and those are to
finish the race in a certain time, to feel proud
of myself, and to improve my health. They found that
men were more likely to provide reasons to do with
achievement and competition, whereas women were more likely motivated by
(21:57):
psychological reasons such as to improve mood. But we should
also point out that the study author did not think
that you could extract late that data to say that
men are inherently more competitive than women, but that maybe
this is an opportunity for all of us to expand
our goals for running, whether it be to just cross
(22:18):
the finish line and feel great about doing it, or
cross the finish line in a certain amount of time,
or for me sneak on a course and cross the
finish line without getting caught. Right and they do, said
an author um in this article that talks about the study.
They said an author He says that it doesn't really
matter what your motivation is, whether it's I'm going to
beat everyone and get the best time in the world,
(22:40):
or I want to slim down and get healthy. You
should just have a reason that works for you. Like
my friend Nolan tells me this all the time, Like
when I'm complaining about how I don't run, He's like, well,
you should run and get in shape and stuff, And
I'm like, well, but I don't even I just want
to go home and get my pajamas. And he just
says that it's important just to have a reason to run,
whether it's I want to run so that I can
(23:01):
get good enough to be in a marathon, or I
want to run to get healthy and feel better about myself. Well,
I will tell you this if you would like a
pajama related excuse to run. Anytime I run, I sleep
so much better that night. Yeah, it's true. So it
will make your pajama ton more enjoyable, more enjoyable, and
more worthwhile, so that I would encourage you to run
(23:24):
for the sake of your of your pajamas. UM and
also joined the legions of women who are running like
we mentioned earlier. Is this coming from Running USA dot org.
More women compete in road races than men do now
UM According to their two thousand eleven data, in five ks,
(23:45):
ten ks, and half marathons, women made up a majority
of the competitors, but still more men do run the
full marathon and women of men versus women, And I
thought it was interesting they break down the demographics of
these runners, these long distance runners. Who are these people?
(24:05):
And they looked at the women who participate, and by
a long shot, the women. These women runners are college educated,
se have earned a college diploma, as opposed to the
general population, which is something like a quarter like um.
They tend to be affluent and their active participants, who
train year round and on average, bought three point two
pairs of running shoes in the past year. And I
(24:26):
think I've had my running shoes for about four years.
I'm not one of these people. But you can be, Caroline,
you can be Yeah. I guess I've just been busy.
I don't have time to be running for four hours. Well, hey,
why don't we Why don't we end this podcast with
one final fun fact as to why why do we
(24:48):
call it a marathon in the first place. This was
one thing that popped up in my head as we
were we're searching this. I just wanted to know where
this whole marathon and why is it twenty six miles? Uh?
For you fact nerds out there like me, this is
coming from Live Science Marathon. The word marathon comes from
a place called Marathon in Greece. It's not a gas station.
(25:12):
It is not the gas station Marathon. It is a
city in Greece and the origin of the marathon relates
back to the founder of the International Olympic Committee. While
he was planning for the first Olympics, he came up
with this twenty It was about twenty five miles at
the time, twenty five mile run um in relation to
(25:34):
this chapter from Greek history with the run of a
soldier from a battlefield near the town of Marathon, Greece
to Athens in four ninety BC, in order to announce
to the Athenians that they the Greeks, had defeated the Persians.
And apparently though the soldier delivered the message of victory
(25:56):
and then he died. Well, good for him him, I mean,
at least he made it. I would have dropped dead
way before that. He was clearly running very fast. Yeah,
a lot of the twenty five entrance in that very
first marathon. In the very first Olympics in eight only
nine runners hit the finish line. And then you have
the Boston Marathon that was started soon thereafter, I believe
(26:20):
in the following year. Actually um as directly related to
the Olympics. So there's your marathon knowledge. Now. I know
that we have only focused on marathon running. There's a
lot more running topics that we could cover, but we
figured that that would be biting off more than we
could chew in one podcast, So for now, let us
(26:42):
know your thoughts on women and marathons. Oh and by
the way, I have never snuck into another race. If
I and if I run the Peach Tree this year,
I will do it with a number, so you know
I there we go. It was. It was ignorance on
my part. Race organizers of the world can rest easy. Yeah,
I don't want I don't want some racing police at
(27:02):
my door after this podcast, because does exist, yes in
my mind. Well, let us know your stories about running
mom stuff at Discovery dot Com is email address you
can send it to. And in the meantime, we've got
a couple emails here to share. This first one is
from Chelsea in relation to our Richest Women in the
(27:22):
World podcast and uh, at one point we made what
she called a snarky little quip about John Walton's kit
built plane crash. She writes, I understand the confusion, but
I wanted to clear up about kitplane and experimental aircraft.
Experimental aircraft is a name that is attached to any
plane that is not built in a factory. My dad
(27:43):
has been working on a kit plane for more than
half my life. The point of building a plane yourself
is not to save money and cut corners, thereby producing
a slip shot or subpar product. These planes are a
labor of love. Some planes maybe low quality, but one
should not assume that all such planes are unsafe or
less airworthy. I've had to explain to so many people
(28:04):
that yes, he's building a plane, no, not a model,
and yes, the kind of people actually ride in. He's
put an intense amount of love, craftsmanship's stubbornness, and plane
anal retention into his plane. I'm crazy proud of him
and want others to know that a home built plane
is nothing to fear, especially if you know that was
made by a true engineer. That's great. Yeah, I'm glad
(28:26):
she informed us of that, because I, like probably many people,
had this idea of a kit that was not as safe.
I was imagining just like a like an inflatable plane. Yeah,
well that would be dangerous for sure. Okay, this email
is from Anson, who is writing about our women Pilot episode.
(28:47):
I am writing from yellow Knife, Northwest Territories, which was
recently voted as the most female friendly airport in the world.
This is the result of an initiative called Girls Fly Too,
started by a helicopter pilot at Trinity Helicopters here and
yellow Knife. She wanted to fly five young women and
girls in one day three weeks ago. The event took
place under sunny skies and over four girls between ages
(29:08):
seven and twenty two were flown. A friend who took
her thirteen year old daughter reports that her daughter was
thrilled and now talks of nothing else than becoming a
helicopter pilot. I grew up around aviation and am now
involved in air traffic survey that services with nav Canada,
Canada's provider of a T C and a T S.
I talked to many many female pilots on the radio.
Maybe about a third of all my contacts are female
(29:30):
and increase since I started in this business ten years ago.
The future is very bright for women who want to
become pilots, and organizations like the Royal Canadian Air Cadets,
the ninety nine, the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association and
the Experimental Aircraft Association are working hard at getting out
the message that girls can fly too. Excellent, So thanks
(29:50):
to everyone who's written in Mom's Stuff at Discovery dot
com is where you can send your letters. You can
also find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter
at Mom's Stuff Podcast, and there are a ton of
articles all about running at our home website, it's how
Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to check out our
(30:13):
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff
Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
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(30:34):
you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
From how Stuff Works dot com, Hello and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And before we
(00:20):
go any further, this episode on women and marathon's is
owed to a listener Scott Perry in Calgary, this one's
for you. Scott Perry sent us an email saying, Hey, gals,
guess what The Boston Marathon is rolling around April sixteen
and it marks the fort anniversary of women being officially
(00:44):
allowed to run in it. And so I forwarded the
email to Caroline and said, Hey, Caroline, you know it's awesome.
We have a fantastic listener named Scott who has fantastic
idea about running. And then we talked about Scott for
a while and how smart he was. Yeah, we were
actually we were going to do the podcast originally on Scott,
just about Scott, but we thought that could get creepy. Yes,
(01:04):
Facebook profile was private, so we decided to go with
Boston Marathon's a broader topic. Um, and I'll kick things
off with a little marathon anecdote while I do jog
um a couple of times a week. If I'm being good,
I try to do it at least a couple of
times a week. I'm not really a long distance runner.
(01:26):
The only long distance marathon I have ever participated in
was the Peachtree road Race, which is one of the
largest tin caves in the world. There's something like fifty
five thousand participants who run right past our building in fact,
here in Atlanta, Georgia. And a few years ago, my
(01:47):
then boyfriend and I decided that we wanted to run
the road race. It was the fourth of July. It
would be something kind of fun to do together. They're
all these people. I was a recent um transplant to Atlanta,
so we didn't really think about the fact that, hey,
this spur of the moment idea means that we didn't
(02:07):
have a number, and we didn't realize that that. We
We thought, like, you know, you could just you could
just sort of jump on the course if you just
run it. Uh, there were so many other people who
did have numbers. Would two people without a number really
make a difference. So we took Marta the public transit
(02:27):
down to the start of the race. The swarms of people.
It was at the break of dawn. It was very eerie.
It was actually kind of like zombie land here because
there were just people walking around and sort of next
to nothing and running gear while the sun was rising.
And ran into Sarah from stuff he missed in history class,
(02:48):
who of course had a number like a proper a
proper participant, and she immediately and gently informed us that
we might want to watch our acts and keep a
little profile because we really should not be on the
course without numbers. Will you get thrown off? Yeah, there
(03:08):
are people on their watching to see um if you
have a number or not. Well, is it is it
to protect against like crazy people doing crazy stunts or
is it just like there's already so many people there.
We don't want unregistered runners. There are already so many
people there, and especially for the really serious runners to
go first or those time trials that they have to
compete in other marathons, so you don't want random folks
(03:29):
just mucking up the race course. But the good news
is good news for me anyway, is that my boyfriend
and I were able to run it anyway. And my
favorite part was passing by a Catholic church where priests
was throwing out holy water on the runners, so I
like dodged over and got sprinkled, and I really think
(03:52):
that it helped me cross the finish line good. And
you didn't melt or anything. I did not melt, even
though I'm not Catholic, so hey, anything helps when you're
running that long. I I I am a very loose jogger.
I jogged sometimes when I feel like it. I get
into periods of jogging. That's about it. I'm imagining you
(04:14):
like running without using your arms for some reason, that's
my my image of loose jogging flailing your shoulders. Well,
you know, I thought it was funny that you mentioned
that you and your boyfriend just like jumped in, because well,
it's not funny because that's how women had to run
marathons at first, because they just they weren't allowed. Like
(04:36):
flat out women were not allowed to register for marathons.
I mean they could run, they could do what you
guys did, and you know, be unofficial participants and not
have their time count or anything, but they were not welcome. Yeah.
The thing is I was merely following in the footsteps
of women like ROBERTA. Gibb and Catherine Switzer in the
(04:59):
Boston Mayor Marathon. Um, and since we kicked things off
talking about the Boston Marathon, we should go ahead and
mentioned that this race has been going on since eighteen
nine seven and two thousand twelve were only at the
fort anniversary of women being officially allowed to run. And
like you hinted at earlier, Caroline, there were women who
(05:23):
jumped into the phrase secretly in the Boston Marathon in
nineteen sixty six. The first known woman to do this
was ROBERTA. Gibb, who had applied to running the Boston Marathon,
but her application was rejected because women were not According
to the official rules of amateur running at the time,
women were not allowed to run that far, which is
(05:46):
a marathon. We should go ahead and say is twenty
six point two miles? Which makes me tired? Just about yeah,
I have no design. I see people running. I know
I have friends who just ran a half marathon. My
roommate was part to that. He came home and I
don't think he moved. I think you're flailing arms and shoulders.
Would be very tired by the end of that. I
(06:08):
would throw something out of his socket. They would um.
But GiB wasn't trying to make a statement, She wasn't
trying to break down barriers. She just wanted to run.
She was a twenty three year old young Navy wife
and um she had watched the race in nineteen sixty
four and pointed out that all she saw was people.
She didn't take note of the fact that there were
(06:28):
no women running. She just thought it was neat. She
liked the type of people who participated, and so she
wanted to get involved also, so in nineteen sixty six
she she she goes to Boston and kind of hangs
out on the sidelines like, oh, no, I'm just me. No,
I'm just wearing shorts because it's March or April in Boston,
(06:51):
you know, no, no problem. And she ended up jumping
in as the runners came by. And there's a little
bit of controversy about where she actually jumped in, whether
or not she and the entire course, or if she
jumped in a little less conspicuous spot more than the
in the middle of the marathon. But nevertheless, she crossed
the finish line, ended up getting a time of three hours,
(07:11):
twenty one minutes forty seconds and finished not too bad
out of five hundred. But the next year, Katherine Switzer
enters the race. And this is the story that has
been circulating around blogs as this year as the Boston
Marathon approaches, because there is photographic evidence of the race organizer,
(07:36):
one of the organizers, Jocks Simple, trying to push Switzer
off the race course, like literally literally off there, pushing
her off physically. Um. She ended up getting into the
race officially by applying as k V Switzer, but she
claims she's a little sneaky about this. She claims that, oh, well,
(07:57):
you know, I was just I was using my initial
just in day to day business. But she also knew
that if she registered as Catherine she would not be
allowed to run, right, And she managed to avoid the
pre race physical too by saying that she'd been cleared earlier,
so she had a plan. She knew it was, She
knew what was going on. And if you've seen pictures
(08:18):
at all, if you follow any news about the race
or know anything about running history, there a lot of
pictures circulating now too of that of that period where
this Jock Simple guy, this crotchety old Scottish man tried
to push her out of the race, and you can
see where Tom Miller, Switzer's boyfriend at the time, who
was a football player and a big dude, just like
totally body checked it and pushed him off the off
(08:43):
of his girlfriend. Well, the photos are somewhat disturbing because
what had happened was that as she was running the race,
the the media that was they had media trucks that
were tracking the people running, and there was word that
spread that there was a woman running. She's running along
in this with a number, with a number it is important,
(09:04):
with a kind of a floppy sweatsuit on, and so
they start taking pictures of her, and this catches Jock
simples attention, and some of the media people start heckling
Jock Simple, saying, hey, look, there's a there's a woman
running in your race. And he was just incensed, specifically
the fact that she had a number, and according to Switzer,
(09:26):
he grabbed her and said, get the hell out of
my race and give me those numbers. But like you said,
her football boyfriend basically just tackled him, got him out
of the way, and she kept running across the finish
line with the time of four twenty yeah, which she
admits is not the best time, but She said that
(09:46):
she was determined to finish the race on her hands
and knees, that she had to just approve that a
woman could because she realized at that time how important
this whole thing was. If she was like being physically
pushed out of the race by of its organizers, she
just realized how important it was that her participation be visible. Yeah.
Sports Illustrated interviewed Jock Simple a couple of years after
(10:09):
this incident, and he was completely unapologetic. He claimed that,
you know, he was not motivated so much by getting
a woman off the track, but as an unauthorized number
holder to make up a phrase. Well, Switzer actually endured
a lot of criticism for her hobby, which is running
(10:31):
um back in nineteen sixty six, the year before the marathon,
when she was training at Lynchburg College in Virginia, that
you know, after the whole roberta GiB thing that had
attracted the attention of the Associated Press who ran an article.
And after the article ran, Switzer got a letter saying
that God will strike you dead if she tried to run. Yeah. Well,
being a runner because she was training with the men's team,
(10:53):
and so this attracted all sorts of negative attention. And
I just can't I just can't imagine thinking that running
with men as a woman is enough to get me
struck down, smited, smoked, might be smoked, struck by lightning.
I do think we should clarify that that. Switzer said
that the negative attention at the time was not coming
(11:15):
from the other male runners. The guys were fine with
her running alongside them and probably thought it was cool.
But she said that the real negativity came from race
organizers and the media and athletic associations that were cleaning
to this notion that running long distances was bad for women. Bad.
(11:38):
And when I say bad, I mean physically bad. Um.
And we should talk about a little bit earlier in
the history of running, and especially in the Olympics, that
because of poor coaching styles, when women would run longer races,
like there was a half mile in the Olympics and
a number of women who compete, then it actually collapsed
(12:01):
before they crossed the finish line because they were exerting
so much energy at the outset they were completely exhausted
by the end. Yeah, And there was just this general
belief that any long distance running put too much of
a strain on women. It interfered with their ability to
get pregnant and have children, so that it would it
would hurt your uterus to run well. And that was
also connected with, um, some female runners complaining of irregular periods,
(12:25):
so doctors assumed that by extension, if you're running a
lot your periods are irregular, you must be damaging your uterus,
and by God, you won't be able to have children.
Right um. The website Run like a Girl film dot com.
It's a it's it's based on the film Run Like
a Girl. That's pretty self explanatory, right um. And they
have a lot of running history on their website and uh.
(12:47):
In women were allowed to compete in the Olympic track
and field events, but because of their exhausted condition at
the end of the eight hundred final, the event was
dropped until nineteen sixty. So apparently they looked so shabby
at the end that people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
how is your uterus? Do you need to sit down?
Maybe we shouldn't do this, don't run so far. And
(13:10):
because of that, women were certainly barred from running twenty
six point two miles, which is the official length of
a Marathon. But once Switzer competed um then in nineteen
sixty nine, and a lot of this does happen. These
barriers are being broken. At the Boston Marathon. We have
Cambridge native Seami Burman who won in the women's division,
(13:36):
but this was unofficial because women had not yet been invited. Yeah,
in nineteen seventy, Berman finished with a strong time of
three hours, five minutes and seven seconds, at which point
a reporter asked why did you do it? And at
the time she was steeming like, are you kidding me?
I just got this incredible time, and I ran and
I did great, and your your question for me is
(13:58):
why did I do it? And she just said that
they were just so patronizing, the reporters, the observers of
the race. But now her attitude has changed a little
bit about why they asked that question. Yeah, she talks
a lot about how the headlines of the time would
be like housewife running. There was always this had to
be this juxtaposition of some kind of stereotypically, you know,
(14:20):
feminine occupation with what at the time was a masculine
pursuit of running, even though today women comprise I think
it's fifty of competitors in road races UM. And then
in nineteen seventy two the Boston Marathon finally UM officially
(14:40):
invites women to enter, and Nina Kusick wins for the women.
And this is a funny little tidbit. Katherine Switzer ends
up getting third in the women's but her trophy was broken.
And when Jack Simple, the curmudgeon le scott It presents
her with this broken trophy, said that she deserved it broken. Yep.
(15:02):
He said that he'd been mad at her for years,
that five years. That Jock Simple holds a grudge, he does,
and he I there was an article that basically our
interview with him a couple of years later where he
basically was like, yeah, I'm mad about it. Still he
wasn't he wasn't gonna let it go. Well, if you
look at the photos of him when he's trying to
push her off the track, there he has a crazed
(15:25):
look in his eye, and when he's talking about that,
it seems like because of that photographic evidence, perhaps the
sting was a little bit sharper. Yeah. Katheryn Switzer in
one interview did talk about how you could when her
boyfriend hit him, you could you could hear like his
body being shoved aside, like the hit was so hard.
(15:47):
So maybe his maybe his pride was hurt in addition
to his body when that happened. So in nineteen seventy two,
the Boston Marathon opens up to women, but the Olympics
did not open up a women's marathon until the l
A Games in nineteen eighty four, and they were still
(16:07):
hung up. The i o C, the International Olympic Committee,
was still hung up on that idea that running a
long distance would injure women and especially their ability to
have children. UM, but several studies would emerge, especially from
an Atlanta physiologist, David Martin at Georgia State University, who
found that UM, women's long distance running was just fine
(16:33):
for them, and because of the way the female body
stores fat, there was this notion that we might actually
be better equipped for long distance running compared to men.
And research like that was really crucial and convincing the
i o C to allow women to run. I mean,
it's I think it's interesting that this body, this governing organization,
had to be really convinced that women could participate. Well,
(16:56):
I mean, we could, we could spin in a positive
light and say, well that it's good that they were
looking out for what at the time was maybe the
best for women if there was if if medical knowledge
had not figured out what was going on inside of
women's bodies, and maybe they just thought women really weren't
capable of it. Yeah, but I mean as training. As
(17:18):
training has improved, women have obviously shown that they're capable
of achieving good times and marathons and not passing out.
But here is the question, when it comes to men
running women running, will we ever catch up to the guys?
Not exactly. There's a Time magazine article from two thousand
(17:41):
and eight where Tim Noakes, a professor of exercise and
sports science at the University of Cape Town, not that
whole fat store theory. You know that women have more
fuel to propel them in a in a long long
distance race. Um. He says that there is a lot
to do with Wait when compare ring men and women
and testosterone and muscle. Yes, if you um, if you
(18:05):
compare male and female just recreational runners, not people who
would be competing in the Olympics, the guys are about
twenty two pounds heavier than the women. So if you
look at wreck runners. That fat store idea might hold
some more sway because women are lighter and they have
these longer term energy stores, whereas men with higher muscle
(18:28):
mass can burn calories quicker. But it's for those those short,
shorter bursts of energy. But Noakes says that the world
record marathon runners of each gender are very close in weight.
I mean, if you look at those runners, they are
paired down to there's not any single ounce of body
fat on them. And he says, um that if you
don't match for weight, then yeah, women get the advantage,
(18:49):
but once you match for weight, men still run about
ten percent faster. And it has to do with higher
levels of testosterone that builds the muscle that gets your
foot off the ground as quickly as possible. Right, So
he's basically saying, you know, when you look at just
a general group of runners, whether it's in a marathon
or a five k or whatever, Um, a woman running
(19:14):
next to a bigger man is going to be able
to move that mass around faster because she's lighter, so
she might get a better time. But when you when
you have runners of about the same weight a man
and a woman, the man will propel himself faster. Yeah,
from any distance between a hundred meters and a thousand kilometers,
women are consistently nine to eleven percent slower than men,
(19:39):
So chances are women are not going to catch up
to men on the race. But that does not mean
that women have not been getting faster times right. A
two thousand Duke study looked at women's increasing participation and
they're increasing speed both in running and in swimming. And
they point out that before the seventies, few women been
(20:00):
ran for recreation and amateur regulations on competitive racing barred
them from distances longer than four kilometers, which we've touched on,
and they have found that as women's participation in sports,
not just running, has dramatically increased over the past century,
the disparities and performance have decreased because women are being
trained better than they were in the past. But nevertheless
(20:23):
you still see a pretty big gender gap. They point
out that the women's hundred meter world records um and
this was back in the year two thousands, so that
might have been broken since then, but they say that
it's about the same as the men's record for a
hundred meters that seventy five years earlier. But I mean. Nevertheless,
if you chart the UM world records of men's running
(20:48):
versus women's running, women's times have decreased at a faster
rate in the past forty years, and men's just because
our participation has increased exponentially compared to them, because we
were not previously allowed to run very far. Yeah, and
talking about participation, we should probably look at why people
are participating, uh, and competing in these in these crazy
(21:12):
races that I won't even watch because they exhaust me.
Why would you want to run twenty six miles. It's
like that Brian Reagan but where he's talking about like
all those iron Man type competitions and he's like, sure,
you don't have to do this. I always want to
say that to runners, like you don't. You can come
inside and have a sandwich. I can just drive you. Uh,
it's on my way. Yeah, that's gonna be a short drive,
(21:35):
like twenty minutes. UM study looked at people's motivations for
running their first marathons and found that there are some
common reasons for men and women, and those are to
finish the race in a certain time, to feel proud
of myself, and to improve my health. They found that
men were more likely to provide reasons to do with
achievement and competition, whereas women were more likely motivated by
(21:57):
psychological reasons such as to improve mood. But we should
also point out that the study author did not think
that you could extract late that data to say that
men are inherently more competitive than women, but that maybe
this is an opportunity for all of us to expand
our goals for running, whether it be to just cross
(22:18):
the finish line and feel great about doing it, or
cross the finish line in a certain amount of time,
or for me sneak on a course and cross the
finish line without getting caught. Right and they do, said
an author um in this article that talks about the study.
They said an author He says that it doesn't really
matter what your motivation is, whether it's I'm going to
beat everyone and get the best time in the world,
(22:40):
or I want to slim down and get healthy. You
should just have a reason that works for you. Like
my friend Nolan tells me this all the time, Like
when I'm complaining about how I don't run, He's like, well,
you should run and get in shape and stuff, And
I'm like, well, but I don't even I just want
to go home and get my pajamas. And he just
says that it's important just to have a reason to run,
whether it's I want to run so that I can
(23:01):
get good enough to be in a marathon, or I
want to run to get healthy and feel better about myself. Well,
I will tell you this if you would like a
pajama related excuse to run. Anytime I run, I sleep
so much better that night. Yeah, it's true. So it
will make your pajama ton more enjoyable, more enjoyable, and
more worthwhile, so that I would encourage you to run
(23:24):
for the sake of your of your pajamas. UM and
also joined the legions of women who are running like
we mentioned earlier. Is this coming from Running USA dot org.
More women compete in road races than men do now
UM According to their two thousand eleven data, in five ks,
(23:45):
ten ks, and half marathons, women made up a majority
of the competitors, but still more men do run the
full marathon and women of men versus women, And I
thought it was interesting they break down the demographics of
these runners, these long distance runners. Who are these people?
(24:05):
And they looked at the women who participate, and by
a long shot, the women. These women runners are college educated,
se have earned a college diploma, as opposed to the
general population, which is something like a quarter like um.
They tend to be affluent and their active participants, who
train year round and on average, bought three point two
pairs of running shoes in the past year. And I
(24:26):
think I've had my running shoes for about four years.
I'm not one of these people. But you can be, Caroline,
you can be Yeah. I guess I've just been busy.
I don't have time to be running for four hours. Well, hey,
why don't we Why don't we end this podcast with
one final fun fact as to why why do we
(24:48):
call it a marathon in the first place. This was
one thing that popped up in my head as we
were we're searching this. I just wanted to know where
this whole marathon and why is it twenty six miles? Uh?
For you fact nerds out there like me, this is
coming from Live Science Marathon. The word marathon comes from
a place called Marathon in Greece. It's not a gas station.
(25:12):
It is not the gas station Marathon. It is a
city in Greece and the origin of the marathon relates
back to the founder of the International Olympic Committee. While
he was planning for the first Olympics, he came up
with this twenty It was about twenty five miles at
the time, twenty five mile run um in relation to
(25:34):
this chapter from Greek history with the run of a
soldier from a battlefield near the town of Marathon, Greece
to Athens in four ninety BC, in order to announce
to the Athenians that they the Greeks, had defeated the Persians.
And apparently though the soldier delivered the message of victory
(25:56):
and then he died. Well, good for him him, I mean,
at least he made it. I would have dropped dead
way before that. He was clearly running very fast. Yeah,
a lot of the twenty five entrance in that very
first marathon. In the very first Olympics in eight only
nine runners hit the finish line. And then you have
the Boston Marathon that was started soon thereafter, I believe
(26:20):
in the following year. Actually um as directly related to
the Olympics. So there's your marathon knowledge. Now. I know
that we have only focused on marathon running. There's a
lot more running topics that we could cover, but we
figured that that would be biting off more than we
could chew in one podcast, So for now, let us
(26:42):
know your thoughts on women and marathons. Oh and by
the way, I have never snuck into another race. If
I and if I run the Peach Tree this year,
I will do it with a number, so you know
I there we go. It was. It was ignorance on
my part. Race organizers of the world can rest easy. Yeah,
I don't want I don't want some racing police at
(27:02):
my door after this podcast, because does exist, yes in
my mind. Well, let us know your stories about running
mom stuff at Discovery dot Com is email address you
can send it to. And in the meantime, we've got
a couple emails here to share. This first one is
from Chelsea in relation to our Richest Women in the
(27:22):
World podcast and uh, at one point we made what
she called a snarky little quip about John Walton's kit
built plane crash. She writes, I understand the confusion, but
I wanted to clear up about kitplane and experimental aircraft.
Experimental aircraft is a name that is attached to any
plane that is not built in a factory. My dad
(27:43):
has been working on a kit plane for more than
half my life. The point of building a plane yourself
is not to save money and cut corners, thereby producing
a slip shot or subpar product. These planes are a
labor of love. Some planes maybe low quality, but one
should not assume that all such planes are unsafe or
less airworthy. I've had to explain to so many people
(28:04):
that yes, he's building a plane, no, not a model,
and yes, the kind of people actually ride in. He's
put an intense amount of love, craftsmanship's stubbornness, and plane
anal retention into his plane. I'm crazy proud of him
and want others to know that a home built plane
is nothing to fear, especially if you know that was
made by a true engineer. That's great. Yeah, I'm glad
(28:26):
she informed us of that, because I, like probably many people,
had this idea of a kit that was not as safe.
I was imagining just like a like an inflatable plane. Yeah,
well that would be dangerous for sure. Okay, this email
is from Anson, who is writing about our women Pilot episode.
(28:47):
I am writing from yellow Knife, Northwest Territories, which was
recently voted as the most female friendly airport in the world.
This is the result of an initiative called Girls Fly Too,
started by a helicopter pilot at Trinity Helicopters here and
yellow Knife. She wanted to fly five young women and
girls in one day three weeks ago. The event took
place under sunny skies and over four girls between ages
(29:08):
seven and twenty two were flown. A friend who took
her thirteen year old daughter reports that her daughter was
thrilled and now talks of nothing else than becoming a
helicopter pilot. I grew up around aviation and am now
involved in air traffic survey that services with nav Canada,
Canada's provider of a T C and a T S.
I talked to many many female pilots on the radio.
Maybe about a third of all my contacts are female
(29:30):
and increase since I started in this business ten years ago.
The future is very bright for women who want to
become pilots, and organizations like the Royal Canadian Air Cadets,
the ninety nine, the Canadian Owners and Pilots Association and
the Experimental Aircraft Association are working hard at getting out
the message that girls can fly too. Excellent, So thanks
(29:50):
to everyone who's written in Mom's Stuff at Discovery dot
com is where you can send your letters. You can
also find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter
at Mom's Stuff Podcast, and there are a ton of
articles all about running at our home website, it's how
Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to check out our
(30:13):
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff
Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
possibilities of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has
a ride. Download it today on iTunes. Brought to you
by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are
(30:34):
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