Bold Stories

She Ran Anyway: Kathrine Switzer at the 1967 Boston Marathon

In 1967, the Boston Marathon had no women in its official field. Kathrine Switzer, a 20-year-old journalism student at Syracuse University, had trained for months with her coach. She registered under the name “K. V. Switzer” and received a bib number: 261.

A few miles in, race official Jock Semple spotted her, ran after her and tried to tear the number off her shirt. Her boyfriend, running beside her, shoved him away. Photographers captured the whole thing.

Switzer said later that she knew in that moment that if she quit, people would say women couldn’t do it. So she finished, in roughly four hours and twenty minutes.

Women were officially allowed into the Boston Marathon in 1972. Switzer went on to win the New York City Marathon’s women’s race in 1974, campaigned for the women’s marathon in the Olympics (it arrived in 1984), and later founded 261 Fearless, a global running community for women named after her bib.

The bold move wasn’t the start line. It was the next step after someone tried to stop her.

Take it into your day

Is there a room you are “not supposed” to be in yet? You don’t need to be fearless. You need to keep moving for the next mile.

Illustration: AI-generated, not a photo of the person.