Show Notes

• Motivational parents, and the feeling of empowerment
• April 19, 1967 – Boston
• 261 Fearless
• 1984 Olympics: The women’s marathon
• What it takes to improve, in any area of life
• How the sport of running has changed
• Paving the road for opportunities
• The most important thing about aging
• What Kathrine loves about running

Connect With Kathrine Switzer

Website: https://kathrineswitzer.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kathrineswitzer/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarathonWomanNews
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KVSwitzer

Summary

Kathrine Switzer made history in 1967 by becoming the first woman to officially register and run the Boston Marathon. She would later go on to win the New York City Marathon, and to become a crusader for women’s sports. Kathrine discusses how that snowy day in 1967 both radicalized and inspired her to create opportunities for other women in running.

Full Transcript

Brian  

Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers, and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success. In 1967, Kathrine Switzer made history by becoming the first woman to officially register and run the Boston Marathon. She did so despite the efforts of the race director to physically remove her from the course because she was a woman. Kathrine finished that race and would later go on to win the New York City Marathon, which she accomplished in 1974. Kathrine is not only an iconic athlete, but she has become a crusader for women’s sports. She was instrumental in making the women’s marathon an Olympic event, which debuted in 1984. She is the founder of 261 Fearless, an organization that empowers women through running and is named after her 1967 Boston Marathon bib number. Kathrine is a journalist and TV commentator and the author of several books, including “Running and Walking for Women Over 40” and her memoir, “Marathon Woman.” Kathrine has been widely honored for her contributions to running and she is a member of both the National Distance Running Hall of Fame and the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Welcome, Kathrine, and thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

Kathrine  

Thank you, Brian, it’s so great to be here. And thank you for all those kind words, so nice.

Brian  

It’s wonderful to have you. Kathrine, April 1967 was a day that not only changed the trajectory of your life, but became the catalyst for a social revolution around women’s running. But it didn’t start out that way and I don’t think anyone could have predicted the impact your running that year would have on the world. What caused you to compete in the Boston Marathon – a race that, from its origin in 1896, was historically a men’s only race?

Kathrine  

My coach, actually…first of all, I grew up with a dad and a mom who were very, very motivational and a dad, especially, who said I should run a mile a day and I could make the field hockey team in my high school. I think what he saw was an insecure kid who needed something to have a little victory with and he knew I could run. A mile a day seemed enormous to me, but I went out and I did it every day and I got this enormous sense of empowerment. So whenever I heard about a challenge, I never backed away from it because I thought I could do anything. I mean, I really felt like superwoman all the time. It’s a great way for a kid to grow up, believe me. I pass that message on to every adult I know, to influence their kids, to give them that sense of empowerment, and [to] any kid on the street even just because opportunities, everything…Anyway, I think it was at Syracuse University where I got adopted by the volunteer coach on the men’s cross country team, he was a really old guy, he was 50, and a retired marathoner. He used to regale me with stories of the days of old; of Clarence DeMar and Tarzan Brown, and all these great heroic athletes. I got tired of hearing them one night and said, why don’t we just quit talking about it and run the darn Boston Marathon? And he said, well, a woman can’t possibly do it. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, women are too weak and too fragile. That’s all I needed to hear. I said, I don’t think so. And we argued, we argued vehemently, and finally he said, all right, all right, I’ll tell you what, if you show me in practice that you can do the distance – which I know you can’t possibly do; a woman can’t possibly do it – I’ll be the first person to take you to Boston. So my goal was to prove to him that I could do it. And I had no doubt, I had no doubt if I started with one mile and I could get to ten miles, why couldn’t I get from ten to 20, and 20 to 26? We actually did run the full distance in practice. It’s a great story, because when we finished our 26 miles, I was so excited. He was so excited, but I was not sure we did the full distance so [I said] let’s just run another five miles. And he said, what, you can run another five? And I said sure, so we ran 31 miles that day. At the end of the workout, he passed out and when he came to, he said, this is really [inaudible] women have hidden potential in endurance and stamina. It was something that suddenly just clicked for both of us, that the guys on the cross country team would never go out and run with us when it got longer than like 12 or 13 miles, they thought we were crazy people. But that’s when I started keeping up with them. I could not run them in speed, but I could distance them. Suddenly, I began to realize women do have this hidden resource. And of course, now we know that that probably is changing the face of our sport more than anything else, which is really amazing. So sorry, it was a long story but an important one, because it tells you that really, I went to the Boston Marathon, not for political reasons, but because I was a runner and I felt I deserved to be there. There was nothing about women not being allowed – the rule book – it didn’t say it was men only. There was nothing about gender on the entry form. So, you know, why not? And I had to pay my two dollar entry fee like everybody else.

Brian  

I imagine, in the way you explained it, it sounds like just about anybody thinking about running a marathon, preparing to run a marathon, wondering if they have the endurance to run a marathon if they haven’t done that before, but in the case of you running Boston, there was the issue of women hadn’t done that before. I was thinking about it and I imagine there were a lot of questions afterwards. And I will get into the controversy and the details of the race itself but I imagine there were a lot of questions about how you were able to even register for the race. You said you paid your two dollars but you had to complete an entry form and I think you even had to submit a pre-race physical. It seems like somewhere along the line, somebody would have noticed that an applicant named Kathrine had registered for the race, didn’t they?

Kathrine  

Well, of course, that’s the other thing. These stories can go on and on and you can’t make them up. Two of them; first of all, I was not the first woman to actually run the Boston Marathon. A woman had run the year before, unregistered, jumped out of the bushes and ran, and ran really quite well. Of course, it’s funny how you sometimes think you’re the only one and I thought that she and I were the only ones, when in fact, you go back in history, there were about six women who had run a marathon and some of them really, really pretty good. I’m thinking of a woman in New Zealand who actually had run a 3:14 marathon, so a world record at the time. They had run with their clubs. But what I did is, my dad misspelled my name on my birth certificate, and he left out the “E” on Kathrinee so my name was always misspelled. When I started writing journalism – because I was at Syracuse University to study journalism – and well before that, in high school, I began signing my name KV Switzer because I thought it stopped my name from being misspelled, which really annoyed me and also KV Switzer was kind of cool. It’s like JD Salinger or EE Cummings; that’s how they sign their names. So I was doing what I thought was a writerly thing. When I signed the entry form “KV Switzer,” they thought it was from a guy. That’s just the short thing, I wasn’t trying to defraud anybody, but to tell you the truth, Brian, I didn’t exactly go to Boston Marathon and say, hello, I’m here, I’m a girl, look at me. I wanted to be a runner. I just wanted to run. And the guys were wonderful to me. All the guys in the race were terrific. It was only this angry official…well, lots of angry officials and and certainly some pretty irritated spectators too. But hey, that happens all the time. You need to get pushed back. But the officials made the difference in terms of attacking me – Jock Semple, who was the co-race director.

Brian  

So you showed up that cold day in April 1967, trained and obviously prepared to run the marathon, and you’re wearing bib number 261. Tell us how you were feeling because it was your first, even though technically you had run a marathon. (Kathrine:  There it is.) Oh, there it is, oh, my goodness. That the actual bib from the marathon? 

Kathrine  

No, it’s actually a fake. I can’t lie. It’s made up enough to look like it. [Laughter].

Brian  

Well it was beat up even, that day. So you were prepared to run, you had run marathon distance in practice and you were ready to go. Tell us how you were feeling before the start and then describe the chaos that ensued within the first few miles of that 26.2 mile race?

Kathrine  

Well, you got to understand it was the worst weather conditions in the history of the Boston Marathon ever until 2018. It was headwind, sleet, snow – horrible, horrible conditions. And so everybody looked like refugees. We had on everything we owned and my idea of wearing cute shorts and top went out the window, and I had to wear my really crummy baggy sweats and gloves and hood, everything, just to stay warm. So we were all huddled together, the officials who were in disarray trying to get us off the starting line. When the gun went off, everybody was anxious to get moving because we were freezing. So off we went when the gun went off and the press truck was behind us, if you can imagine that. It was a huge race in those days; it was like almost 600 people. But still, the press truck started behind the field, which was very upsetting to me because it had to beep its horn and make everybody get over. The officials came by behind the press truck. The press, of course, were all excited seeing a girl in the race. The officials were on the bus and this one official, Jock Semple, was notorious for having a short fuse and the journalists who were on the bus were actually teasing him and saying, hey, Jocko, there’s a girl in your race, I wonder what her mother calls her – Kurt, Carri or Kim – and he just lost it. He jumped off the bus, went after me, it’s his race, it was his baby, he was tired. Here was somebody making a fool of him, is what he thought, and desecrating his beautiful, fantastic race when I was really just trying to be a runner. So when he attacked me, it was a total surprise. I didn’t see him until he attacked me. I heard him at the last minute and turned and he grabbed me. It was a really terrifying moment. Up to that point, I just thought I was part of the group and then all hell broke loose and my coach tried to push him away. He smashed my coach back and then my boyfriend, who was an ex all-American football player, decided that he would take out the official and he did – whooo [laughter] – the most amazing kind of shoulder charge, cross-body block thing. He hit the deck and we went on running,

Brian  

What was going through your mind as that happened? I mean, today if that happened, who knows what people would think, but what did you think happened as he was approaching you, obviously told you to get off the course, I don’t know if you knew who he was. Tell us about that.

Kathrine  

Well, I didn’t know who he was but my coach did because my coach had run with him. They were all running buddies. I remember him – my coach screaming – leave her alone, Jock, she’s okay. I’ve trained her, leave her alone. I thought does Arnie know this maniac because it came out of the blue to me. I was completely blindsided by it. He pushed, Arnie, my coach, and said, stay out of this, came back and grabbed me. That’s when, Tom, my boyfriend, took him out. What was I thinking? I mean, all I was thinking is, is this a bad dream? What’s happening? I just didn’t grab it. And then I was acutely, acutely embarrassed, because I thought somehow, I barged into this really amazing race – one of the most famous races in the world next to the Olympics, probably the greatest one – and I’m screwing it up and oh, my god, what should I do? Then when Tom knocked Jock away, my coach said, run like hell – it’s funny when I’m re-telling it – so down the street we went running as fast as we could go, and cursing and yelling, and everybody in the press truck in hot pursuit. When we took off running the press truck caught up with us and started saying, what are you trying to prove, what are you doing here, are you a suffragette, are you a crusader, what are you trying to do? They got really, really obnoxious. It occurred to me that they really, really wanted me out of this race, and really didn’t want me to finish. I thought, well, I know I can finish. [The press said] are you really going to finish, this is just a joke, right? That was the accusation. Finally…there’s no place to go because I’m running and they are alongside of me, so I just put my head down and just didn’t say anything. Finally, they drifted away, because we weren’t saying anything, and they drifted up to the front. That’s when I turned to my coach and I said – it was really a very defining moment in my life; not getting attacked but this moment – I’m going to finish this race on my hands and my knees if I have to. And I said, everybody wants me to drop out, they expect me to drop out. I said, this is what happens to women all the time. They get told they can’t do anything and then they get abused for trying and of course, then they drop out. And then they say, see, women are always barging into places where they’re not wanted and they can’t do it anyway. I said, I know I can do it and he said okay, okay, let’s just get it together, slow down, make it happen. So, it was funny how time goes on, though. I mean, the marathon is a very long race, I don’t know if you’ve ever run one but when you get to mile 21 and 22, which is where Heartbreak Hill is, you’re on fumes really. At that point, all of the anger, sadness, everything, goes away from you. I suddenly realized that it wasn’t even Jock Semple’s fault for attacking me, he was just a product of his time, that’s the way a lot of people thought so I can’t blame him for protecting his race. But what I can do is try to convince him otherwise. And then I thought, well, how can I do that? And I said, well, other women would run if they weren’t afraid. That’s one reason why we call our charity 261 Fearless, because people are afraid to do things, they don’t do them and then they get accused [of] being incapable of doing it. If you give anybody the opportunity, they’ll rise to the occasion. So I said, if I can just create opportunities for women, I know they’re going to run because I feel so wonderful when I run, and so empowered. So when I hit the finish line, I had this life plan; one, I’m going to be a better athlete, two, I’m going to create the opportunities. Both worked, training works; I trained my brains out, I became a very good athlete, which was amazing, because I was always told I was a “no-talent.” I mean, I’m not world class material, but you can train hard and become close to world class material, my time was world class at the time. Second thing is, is how am I going to create those opportunities? I didn’t know it then, but I just started locally. That’s always the best way, work with what you know. I started working and creating a club in my own town, inviting other women and inviting guys, we worked together, and learned sponsorship, learned marketing and then started writing proposals to big businesses. Because I knew that the way to get attention and the way to get an event done was to get sponsorship. If I could get sponsorship, it would happen. I was very fortunate and had really good writing skills and the big dreams. I took a major proposal to Avon Cosmetics, which was the world’s largest cosmetics company at the time. Now this is years, this is a number of years to create a global series of women’s races. They would get incredibly good publicity, because there’s nothing wrong with women’s running and Title IV had just been passed. They said, well, this is a good thing and it was a relatively cheap promotion for them. It was an astronomical amount of money for running. We wound up eventually doing 400 races in 27 countries for over a million women. The data and statistics from those events were compiled; we compiled them and presented them to the International Olympic Committee and got the women’s marathon into the Olympic Games in 1984. That seemed like a very long time to me, but it’s warp speed, believe me, for the International Olympic Committee. To me it was as important as giving women the right to vote, because it was like the physical equivalent of their ability to achieve and their acceptance. So the intellectual vote is about social change, about intellectual capability. Suddenly people realized women did have a brain back in 1920. So in 1980, the vote took place for 1984. That was really fast. It, the marathon, is the longest event in the Olympic Games, for men and women – running event, because there’s a 50k walk. I think when those women came across the finish line, when they came out of the tunnel into the finish line, it changed the world. There were 90,000 people in the stadium screaming for joy, which was certainly a switch for the Boston Marathon in 1967. But then around the world that reverberated because people were watching it on television. There were 2.2 billion people who watched that on television, and that everybody in the world has gone walking or biking or driven a car or ridden a donkey for 26.2 miles or 42.2 kilometers; they know it’s far so that’s why it resonated. And that’s why it was so important to me.

Brian  

You’ve so succinctly covered about 20 years of running in about five minutes. I want to go back, if we can, because you talked about a lot of different things and I want unpack those things a little bit. First of all, just to give you some context for my running background; it pales in comparison to yours but I run the Detroit half marathon every year. I actually ran one marathon years ago, it was also in Detroit. A marathon is an arduous race, as you know, and I just can’t…I’m so impressed by your entire story. But back to the original race in Boston – because we’re used to obstacles, we train for obstacles, there are certain things we can train for and then, as you know, there are things that we just can’t train for, like what happens at mile 20, or 21, when we hit that wall, and sometimes it’s no longer about how physically conditioned we are but it’s about how mentally conditioned we are – but I can’t imagine the impact of having somebody run onto the course yelling and physically attempting to prevent you from running. I think it’s great that you pushed through that adversity and that incredible disruption, and really, going back about five minutes to how you described it, really not only finished, but weren’t negatively impacted by the experience, but rather used it as fuel to, I think, really enhance your determination and your drive to finish the race. Really terrific story.

Kathrine  

Thank you, Brian, look, here’s one thing, I think, that is exceptional about me. My dad always used to shake his head and say there are two kinds of kids, you go into a room full of horse manure, and one of them says “ewww” and then the other one says, there’s got to be a pony here someplace. And he said, my kid always finds the positive. The point is, I think that’s also a secret to my business success, is that if there is something wrong, or there’s a negative, if you turn it upside down, and you find a solution for it, okay, that’s not only a good thing, but it can be a revenue stream, it can be a business, it can change the world. All people have to do is instead of complaining about it, and saying, okay, what do we have to do here to fix this? For me, organizing a global series of women’s races and seeing women from countries like Malaysia and Philippines and Brazil…Brazil, there were women who didn’t even have shoes. I mean, I’m not talking about Adidas or Nike, I’m talking about shoes. Some of those women running were so poor, they didn’t have a pair of shoes. And when you give them a t-shirt and a medal, they are somebody, they become somebody. And so that is so gratifying, and I just thought every day of my life I am working here in something that is so gratifying for me too. I feel like I’m really giving back and I think a lot of people could use that as a leadership lesson. I really do.

Brian  

Absolutely. Kathrine, was the 1967 experience the impetus for your remarkable career, or you think you still would have achieved amazing things even without what happened in Boston?

Kathrine  

Certainly, it was a big spark. I will tell you the truth:  having that photograph was both a negative and a positive. But I mean, that photograph of Jock Semple attacking me in the race is a seminal photograph now, not only in women’s sports, it’s in sports anyway, but also in the civil rights movement. It’s not quite the march on Selma, but it’s in there for something that resonates with everybody. And now that more and more people are into fitness, they look at it, and they say, this is unbelievable [that] this happened. But it wasn’t that long ago. So was it helpful in my career? Yes, but I’ve got to tell you, I work awfully hard. I really do. I flog myself, because I’m so determined to to make change.

Brian  

I’m not suggesting at all that everything sort of unfolded and opportunities came your way because of that. It really is something to go back to for a “reason why”. We talk a lot about “reason why” in goal setting and business strategy. What’s the “reason why” because with a goal if you don’t have a strong reason why, then you shouldn’t be surprised when you’re not doing what it takes to accomplish that goal. And you’re right, it it takes both. It takes that strong reason why so that when things aren’t going the way you want them to go, you can really dig deep and reach into that fortitude and determination but it also takes the hard work that you mentioned. You’ve certainly done that in a number of areas and we’re going to talk about some of them. One thing I think the event at Boston certainly did was inspire you to create opportunities for other women in running. Was that something that you thought about? Probably not during the race, but immediately after the race or did that come later on? Tell us how that developed, recognizing that you had the opportunity to use that as a way to open the doors for other women in sports.

Kathrine  

It didn’t occur to me right away when I crossed that finish line, how I was going to make it happen, I just knew that I needed to do that and needed, somehow, to create opportunities to help other women, because almost up to Heartbreak Hill – first of all, I murdered Jock Semple every way a person could be murdered – then when I got to Heartbreak Hill, and all the emotions were gone, I just had to let it go. I suddenly said, I’m going to forgive him because he doesn’t know any better. Then in terms of the women, I started getting mad at women again. I said, what is wrong with them? Why aren’t they here? Why are they giving me a hard time, they don’t get it. And then it was “gong!” they’re not here because this kind of thing happens to them in smaller degrees all the time. They’re afraid they’re not going to have the courage to believe in themselves to run 26 miles or to step into an all male domain like this; how in the world are they ever going to take that leap? Then it all started coming down; oh, my god, you notice why women aren’t getting admitted into medical school or law school, and I thought, boy, I don’t know how I’m going to change this but maybe one on one I can change other women and just bring them along into running. But my first concern – believe it or not, this is going to make you laugh – was that when I finished the race, I finished in four hours and 20 minutes and I was okay with that. I wasn’t happy, because I knew I could run faster but my coach said, the priority now is finishing so let’s slow down, let’s keep it together. And the weather conditions were very bad. So four hours and 20 minutes in 1967 was considered a jogging time and so I am embarrassed to say that because it’s a really perfectly legitimate good time, plenty of people listening right now, would be pleased to run four hours and 20 minutes. But anyway, then it was a jogging time. And the next day, in fact, Jock Semple called a press conference. I was back at the university, I had class the next day. But I read in the paper, he was complaining about women and on and on. And he said, and besides that – four hours and 20 minutes, I could have walked it that fast. Well, that made me so angry, because now he not only was criticizing me, but he was humiliating me. So I said, Okay, the first thing is, let’s become a better athlete. So I started training, and I trained really hard. I got to tell you, Brian, I really, I put in some hard yakker, I mean, up to 100 miles a week, double workouts, five in the morning, again at eight o’clock at night, full time job, full time job on the weekend, trying to get my husband through grad school, oh, my gosh, all these things. But every marathon got faster and faster. And then finally, when I ran a two hour 51 minute marathon in 1975 at Boston, which would have won the Boston marathon every year previously –  I didn’t win, I got beaten by a world record. I said, okay, that’s the sixth fastest time in the world, the third in the US. And finally Jock Semple and I became very, very good friends. I had forgiven him all along but finally he came around and I think he figured if Kathrine Switzer could improve her time like that. But then my attention began becoming more of an activist because by that time other women were running, we were working together on how we were going to change the rules. We had gotten official in Boston in 1972. Very importantly, that was in April, and that was also in June when Richard Nixon passed into effect the Title IX Amendment to the Constitution, which was a game changer, leveling the playing field, but not without huge controversy. I think you will remember how many American football coaches went ballistic over giving women equal sports opportunities as if it’s going to detract from their precious football teams. Don’t get me started [Brian:  I already did.] [Laughter] Yeah, you did. You got me going here. Anyway, that’s okay. I believe men should totally have their sports space as well, but there’s room on the planet for all of us as we now see. So I decided, again, that sponsorship was going to be the way, it wasn’t going to be through the collegiate – the marathon running was not going to happen to the collegiate system, but it was going to be through sponsorship and I was right. We changed the Olympics, we got the women’s marathon in, it’s great. And now the Olympics is amazing in terms of the offerings for women and in other sports. We’re seeing tremendous, tremendous inclusion, it’s great.

Brian  

You mentioned the improvement in your marathon time. You went through that pretty quickly and almost glossed over it so I want to hit on that for a minute, because it’s nothing short of remarkable, that level of improvement. I know one of the lessons that you learned through your own running, Kathrine, was that we all have more ability than we give ourselves credit for; you’ve written about that. And in your case, again, you improved your marathon time from four hours and 20 minutes – which is impressive, that’s a very impressive, especially for a first, marathon time – to two hours and 51 minutes. That is really, truly remarkable. I think my marathon time was just under four and a half hours and I’m pretty sure that I will not ever finish a marathon in less than three hours. So that kind of improvement is really terrific. Tell us what it took to make that kind of improvement. And I want to expand it and make it more general for our audience, for listeners and viewers. What wisdom can you share that will help our audience to make improvements like that, not just in running, but in any area of our lives?

Kathrine  

Well, first of all, again, I was also negatively fueled. I even got push-back from my husband at the time – he’s an ex for a reason – which was, you’re not really an athlete, but you’re really good plodder. And I thought, okay, well, training works, though. I knew that training works and I worked really, really hard. The remarkable thing is, is that the human capacity for achievement is beyond anything we ever imagine, even I knew that training would work. The difference is your willingness to pay the price. It’s like if you have to have a full time job to earn money and, like me, go to graduate school at night also, then the only way you’re going to train is to get up at five in the morning, get one workout done, and then squeeze in another workout after work and before you hit the classroom at eight o’clock at night. Many people listening have probably gone through this. Is it hard? It is incredibly hard. I mean, when are you going to have time to eat and sleep? Well, you kind of let those things go by the wayside. People said do you think you could have gotten better than a 2:51? I said, I absolutely could have gotten better than a 2:51, but I never had any sleep. It is remarkable how much we can do. How badly do you want it? How important is it to you? Anybody who’s written a book also knows what that’s like, it is a grind. Everybody says, oh, it must be fun to write a book; it is a grind. You just have to get the words on the page, and you have to get a thousand words on the page every day or the book is not going to get to the printer on time, that kind of thing. So you divide out your time, you divide out what needs to be done and you do it. Things have to go, other things have to slip, like maybe you don’t change the sheets for two weeks, or the dishes pile up in the sink or maybe you don’t vacuum for a while or all of those things – you can’t do everything. So you have to focus your attention on what was really the important thing to you and look at the long term. That’s the other thing. I’m actually a very, very good person at long term gratification. I can really see the reward at the end of the tunnel. And you know what the other thing is, I think I’m also very lucky but I think people make their luck. The point is during that training time – what was it, it was from 1967 to 1975, that’s how long it took me – I didn’t get injured. I had gotten injured since many times, but then I was really lucky that I could push through through those years and not get injured. I guess I have to say that because I did other exercises and I took as good care of myself as I could have at the time. But that was fortunate; anybody can step off a curb and get hit by a car, anybody can get bitten by a dog, anybody can get a bad Achilles, that just happens and that’s too bad. I was really fortunate that I evaded those things.

Brian  

Well, I appreciate you sharing that because the fact of the matter is not everybody listening or watching the show on YouTube is going to train for a marathon, run a marathon, but what you just talked about in those last couple minutes can be applied to any area of life. That’s what we try to do on LifeExcellence is we have people like you who have achieved extraordinary results in a particular area. But the things that you needed to do in order to achieve excellence – running in your case – can be applied universally to other areas of life so I appreciate you sharing that.

Kathrine  

The other thing I didn’t do, though, that I think people should realize is, I think we all are a little more compassionate with each other now than perhaps we were in earlier years. I never asked for help. And that’s a big mistake. I think there’s a lot of help out there and I think a lot of people can help share the load. Especially, I’m talking now about maybe moms and dads who have kids, and they’re trying to work, they’re trying to train; you can switch off with friends, like, hey, I’ll watch your kids while you go running if you watch mine when I go run, that kind of thing. I see again now, and this is another social change that’s happened in my lifetime that is beautiful to see, is that husbands and wives are also switching off. In other words, he’ll take some paternity leave to help her keep her career going. Or in the case of running – I love seeing this – is that she’ll be at the Boston Marathon talking to me and buying a book and having a good time and he’s over there with three kids trying to keep them together at the Expo. And I say, well, you’re a lucky one that he’s watching the kids. And she said, no, this is my time, Boston, and as soon as this is over, he wants to run New York and I’ll watch the kids. So they divide up the time, they switch it off and understand. I think that is so healthy, never used to be that way.

Brian  

It’s wonderful to see that kind of community. That’s one of the great things about a running community. It’s not the only place where community occurs but it’s a really neat dynamic, where you see things like what you described, and just the camaraderie of people running together. I think it is different today, in that you have elite runners like you’ve always had, but then you also have people who are coming from the couch to 5k, or couch to 10k, or half marathon or even people who have never been runners, so to speak, who go out and finish a marathon and maybe it takes them five hours or six hours. But hey, a 26.2 mile walk is a long walk, right? So if you’re scooting along any faster than at a walking pace, even that’s remarkable. What you see, Kathrine, out on the course, is camaraderie. So with the fastest runners, and the slowest runners and everybody in between, they’re advocates for each other. They’re cheering each other on. It’s just a wonderful, wonderful environment. I wish it could be replicated in other places. It probably is, and I’m not familiar with lots of places where that probably gets replicated, but it’s a great dynamic when you see it.

Kathrine  

Well, two things about that. First of all, I told that story about trading off not just in terms of running, but in terms of the fact that we can do that in our other lives. And in fact, my husband is a retired academic and often, the husband and the wife were both academics and they would take a job together. So they would they divide the job in half and the university would allow that, which I think is extremely healthy, that you can be creative if you propose these things to people, maybe it hasn’t occurred to them, that they’d be shocked to hear something like that. But think about why can’t we share this position? Why can’t we do it this way? The other thing I wanted to say about the running model, which is really amazing, was it happened to me in 2017. Maybe you’ll recall, in the New York City Marathon, a terrorist drove into cyclists and runners on the West Side Highway and killed a number of people. This was just four days before the New York City Marathon. So everybody said oh, they’re going to close down the marathon. They’re not going to be able to have it, terrorists are all over the city, oh my god, what are we going to do? My phone was just ringing like crazy because I was actually running that on my 43rd anniversary of having won the race and people said you can’t run, it’s dangerous. I said, look, 55,000 people are going to be running in this race and you know what, I’ve got 55,000 best friends. And the guy on my left, a different color from me, different language, I don’t know anything about him, person on my right, I don’t know what their gender is and I said, you know what, we don’t care. We don’t care about their money, their size, their pace, we’re just going together. And we’re going to hug each other at the end, all sweating and stinking – we’ve never even met each other – because we’ve done something amazing together. We’re working together, even though we really can’t talk much. And to me, that is one of the most extraordinary moments of inclusivity, of equality, respect. And if we can do that in a marathon, we should be able to do it in life, really we should.

Brian  

That’s very well said. Kathrine, you talked about the Olympics and obviously, women’s events in the Olympics have have grown through the years. I think when you ran the Boston Marathon in ’67 the longest race for women – and I don’t know if there were exceptions to this – but I think generally the longest race was about 800 meters. So things have changed dramatically since then. Again, you were instrumental in getting the women’s marathon specifically into the Olympic Games. Why was that so important to you?

Kathrine  

Because it had to bust all the old myths. The reason why there was only an 800 meters in the Olympic Games – that was really “risky” – [was] because of the myths that abound about women’s sports, and they’re still very prevalent in the Mideast and in parts of South America, parts of the far East right now. That if you do anything athletic or arduous, you’re going to turn into a man, you’re never going to have children, it’s inappropriate to sweat, all of these things; they all have this sexual implication, which is really very, very annoying. What they were trying to say to us is that it is actually dangerous and we have to protect women, when in fact, the opposite is the case. The distance races are, in fact, exceptional for women. And as you may have seen in one hundred mile races, and in six day races, women are winning the events outright because we have this natural capacity for endurance and stamina, and a fat source – which is handy to have, because we’re women and we have more fat. But anyway, all of these things are just being discovered. It was very, very important to change it physically so that if people could see women performing, doing something different and exceptional physically, then they realized that women could probably do anything physically, which of course, is the case. We play a different game; women’s soccer and women’s tennis are completely different from the men’s version. But actually, I happen to think it’s much more interesting. I think women’s tennis is as popular as men’s tennis is now and when Billie Jean King started professional women’s tennis, oh, did she get held down! Like, who’s going to pay women, they shouldn’t be paid the same, nobody’s interested in the women’s game. The rest is history. When professional soccer gets more sponsorship and gets on television more, it’s going to be fantastic. I’m actually coming to you from New Zealand. I don’t know if the audience knows that. I live a number of months in New Zealand and we recently had the Women’s World Cup Rugby. Now this is a country that is all about rugby, the All Blacks. It’s amazing. They had the Women’s World Cup Rugby here. The stadium was packed and every sports journalist in the country and every male rugby player said, okay, it’s been a sea change because people were very, very interested in that game and the women played superbly. All of a sudden people go, oh, wow; so the future is very bright. I think anybody who is thinking about going into sports sponsorships and everything, there’s a huge revenue stream there. Every little girl now is going to grow up and realize that she can do anything. So I think that’s hugely fantastic when you realize that’s going to be tremendous in terms of what they can do academically and also in the career and getting into the C suite; it’s a big change.

Brian  

For those little girls growing up today, they benefit from the work that you’ve done for years in paving the road for the opportunities to exist. I think as time goes on, those opportunities will continue to increase. You’ve mentioned a couple of examples of that. Really every barrier is starting to get broken down, especially when we’re talking about sports. Do you know the history of women’s rugby, and when did that start to really take off as a sport? Of course in New Zealand, everybody knows rugby and here in the US where most of our listeners and viewers are, few people really know much about rugby. I don’t even know how to play it. I mean, I’ve seen it played but don’t even understand the game. How long has women’s rugby been so predominant in New Zealand?

Kathrine  

I wouldn’t say it has been predominant, but women have played rugby for quite some time. I would say in only the last four or five years – actually I think I knew three or four years ago that New Zealand was going to get the World Cup – I’ve been starting to actually watch it myself. It’s really scary, they bash each other like crazy. It’s a sport I can’t relate much to, but I approve of anybody who wants to play anything they want to play. But that’s a phenomenal change. I don’t know what’s going to happen on the American football side, what it’s going to look like. What I do see changing in a big way is women’s soccer, which I think is a fantastic sport for everybody, male or female. I’m not sure I approve of football because everybody’s killing everybody and for that matter, male rugby is all about bashing, where women’s is more about speed and passing, the same thing with with soccer. Hey, but we’re going to run out of time and there’s something I want to talk about real quickly. Because a lot of your people listening, everybody actually, is nervous about aging. And what I would love to say is one of the happiest – probably the happiest – day of my life was April 17, 2017, which is when I ran the Boston Marathon again on my 50th anniversary. I was the first woman to run a marathon 50 years after her first one. And that doesn’t make me wonderful, it just shows how few women ran 50 years ago. It was amazing. I trained up for this event, I trained hard. I ran only 24 minutes slower than I ran when I was 20. I think I would have been close to my time actually, if I had paid attention. I mean, I did eight interviews, and I hugged every kid and stopped 13 times and did Facebook Live and all that kind of stuff all the way along the route. But here’s the point. The point is, is that we are all afraid of aging. The most important thing is to not be afraid of aging, but to prepare for aging. So get your ducks in a row, look at the long term where you want to be at what time, keep your health as much as you possibly can but never believe that you can’t do something or start something. Also, when you’re older…I’ve started many, many people – women, especially – to take their first running and walking steps when they’re in their 60s and 70s. They always improve, because the human body always wants to improve. So I just would love to give a moment of encouragement to people and let them know that aging is really not too bad.

Brian  

I really appreciate you sharing that. You give us all hope for aging and for possibility as we age, not just physically, by the way, because you continue to do great things in the world. Kathrine, your bib number in the Boston Marathon, 261, hold that up again.

Kathrine  

Yes, but what I’m going to say is this bib number has become this bib number. And this is now a non-profit I have started – from the sense of fearlessness that people were having from reading this story and hearing the story and tattooing themselves with 261 or inking it on their arms – to start a series of clubs around the world for women who are afraid to take that first step. Now I’m happy to say we’re in 12 countries and in five continents, with women who are now teaching other women how to take the first step and have that same sense of empowerment that I have had that has come from 261.

Brian  

Thank you for sharing that. That was actually my question. I love the tagline “Fearless in the face of adversity,” that’s awesome. So, for our listeners and viewers, make sure you learn more about 261 Fearless. Of course, there will be a link to that in the show notes. I absolutely love to run, Kathrine, like you do. I tell people I do it though, mainly for the impact that it has on my mind, for what it does for me mentally and what happens during that time. It’s okay running with others, but I actually love to run alone for that solitude and just allowing my brain to think about whatever shows up when I’m running. Of course, it’s a great form of physical exercise, too. What do you love about running?

Kathrine  

I totally agree. It’s for my head more than anything else. It’s also a really important time for me for two things. One is like a meditation, it’s a time I go through my gratitude list. You can call that prayer, whatever you want to call it but I’m part of nature and part of the sun and part of air. It’s very important to be outside for me; very, very, very important. And then the second thing is the creativity, because that’s where I get all my ideas and there are real reasons why people have that feeling. The oxygen over the brain synapses apparently activates them and then you get these ideas. So when you were asking me how, for instance, I created that global program to get women’s marathon in the Olympic Games – that was an awful lot of long runs, where I would take an idea or a problem and say, okay, well, how are you going to make this component work? And I would spend maybe a two hour run, working out how that particular part would work. And then I would come in, I’d write it down, put it in an idea box. Because if you don’t write it down, you’re going to forget it, it goes right out of your head. But also, as an author and a journalist, sometimes you just can’t get the nugget of what you want to say. If you go out, it’ll come to you in about 12 minutes, boom. You’ll get it. It’s amazing how the creativity works for me.

Brian  

You are absolutely right. It works the same for me and I love it every single time. Kathrine, thank you so much for being on the show today. It’s an honor to host you. I applaud you for your courage on that cold, wet, snowy day in April 1967 and for the difference that you’ve been making in the world ever since.

Kathrine  

Thank you so much, Brian, thank you for what you’re doing for people too, it’s wonderful to talk to you.

Brian  

Likewise. Thanks again, Kathrine. Thanks for tuning into LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with Kathrine Switzer on social media and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.