Starting Line 1928

Dr. Joan Ullyot, the "fastest physician marathon runner," paved the way for women runners across the world, proving by example that women should not be counted out when it comes to long distances. Ullyot raced in 80 marathons, winning ten of those along with the masters division in the Boston Marathon in 1984. Her book "Women's Running," published in 1976, and her in-depth studies as an exercise p...

In 1969, 32-year-old Sara Mae Berman was the first woman to cross the finish line in the Boston Marathon. She did it again in 1970 and 1971. But women weren't allowed to enter officially, so her times—3:22:46, 3:05:08, and 3:08:30, respectively—were unofficial. "All we ever wanted, us early women, was to be allowed to run the distance, and we weren't in any bloodthirsty competition with each other...

Native people, including women, have been running over these lands since long before anyone organized a major marathon. Yet all too often, with notable exceptions like past guest Patti Catalano Dillon , they aren't represented at modern races. Changing that is the key goal of Native Women Run, an organization that Verna Volker launched in 2018. At first, it was an Instagram page; now, it's a non-p...

Junko Kazukawa is a Japanese-born women's ultra running pioneer best known for having finished the Leadville 100-mile race 10 times. Junko is a two-time breast cancer survivor with more than three decades of experience in health, fitness, and training. She currently works as an ultra endurance coach with Boundless. Junko lives and trains in Denver, Colorado, and has completed 24 100-mile trail rac...

Doris Brown Heritage has always had a need to run.  During a career that spanned roughly twenty years, Brown Heritage held every woman's national and world record from the 440 yards to the marathon. In 1966 she became the first woman to run an indoor sub-five-minute mile in 4:52. Ten years later, on a lark with little training, she won her first marathon, the 1976 Vancouver International Marathon...

"Life is a challenge. And if you can't enjoy that, you're in trouble." Laurel James, founder of the Seattle-based running retailer Super Jock 'n Jill and mastermind behind the 1984 U.S. Women's Olympic Marathon Trials race, does not mince words. James entered the nascent running-retail scene in 1975, and quickly cemented herself as a visionary female entrepreneur, race director, and community pill...

Sue Parks has had a storied career as an athlete and coach who continues to break barriers in the NCAA. Today, Sue is the director of cross-country and track and field at her alma mater, Eastern Michigan University. She's one of the few women leading a track and field program at the Division 1 level. Years before she became a director, Parks was blazing her own path as one of the first women track...

In 1980, Patti Catalano (now  Patt i Catalano Dillon ) became the first American woman to break 2:30 in the marathon. She has held American and world records at various distances—including the 5 mile, 10 mile, 10k, 15k, 20k, 30k and half marathon, and she has been inducted into the RRCA Distance Running Hall of Fame. She won the Honolulu Marathon four times and finished second at the Boston Marath...

Janet Romayko is a veteran of 49 marathons and countless triathlons including the half Ironman distance. But what she is most thrilled with is her 50 consecutive finishes at the Manchester Road Race in Manchester CT, a 4.748-mile race held on Thanksgiving Day started in 1927. She loves running Manchester. "It's very special to me. My family grew up there, are buried there. It's a very sweet feelin...

Cheryl Toussaint is the meet director of the  Colgate Women's Games and an Olympic silver medalist She grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and began running with the Atoms Track Club at age 13. There, Coach Fred Thompson nurtured her athletic talent—and encouraged her academically. Cheryl earned an academic scholarship to New York University and kept training with the Atoms, eventually making...

Francie Larrieu Smith was the youngest woman 1500-meter runner and the oldest woman in any track and field event the U.S. ever sent to the Olympics. Her running career spans five Olympics and multiple distances. Her best Olympic finish was fifth place in the 10,000-meter event at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the first running of the event.  She was the flag bearer for the U. S. Olympic Team at the 199...

Krystine Beneke started her athletic career at a very young age, dancing for the Houston Ballet Academy in Houston. Simultaneously, she began running with her father through their neighborhood. Eventually, Krystine began competing in middle-school and high-school track events. In middle school, she competed in 400s and hurdles. In high school, she enjoyed a variety of distances and events from 300...

This week, we bring you the second part of the story of Olympian PattiSue Plumer— a professional distance runner in the late 80s and early 90s. PattiSue was a two-time NCAA champion and nine-time All American at Stanford. She went on to win four U.S. national titles and make two Olympic teams, placing 13th in the 3K at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and fifth in the 3K and 10th in the 1500 at the 1992 Ba...

Janet Cain is a former USA Track & Field National Marathon Champion in both the 55-59 and 60-64 age group. She set a Napa Valley Marathon record for that latter age group in 2014, finishing the race in 3:43:39. Her life has been a series of exciting wins and heartbreaking losses. Now 72 and living in Sonoma, CA, where she has a clinical psychology practice, Cain is still running strong and posting...

Lou Peyton was one of the first women to complete the Grand Slam of ultrarunning, completing four 100-mile races in the summer of 1989. And in fact, she went on to complete a fifth 100-miler that same year. Peyton started running just a few weeks after her first child was born in 1968. She's also the co-founder, with her husband, of the Arkansas Traveler, a 100 mile race that's still going on toda...

On Thanksgiving Day 1961, at 19 years old, Julia Chase-Brand turned heads when she defied the orders of the Amateur Athletic Union and entered and completed the historic Manchester Road Race. Her participation in the widely followed event opened the door for women's cross-country later that spring and in turn a great number of other changes allowing women to run distance events. Julia faced discri...

Running was not Ingrid Walters' first love. Nor was it her second, or her third. She didn't run in earnest until she turned 41, at which point she immediately began (quite literally) making up for lost time. After swimming competitively through the first two years of college, she began lifeguarding, and picked up beach running to stay in shape. She enjoyed it enough to accept a college classmate's...

Toshiko d'Elia, the first female in the world to run a sub-three-hour marathon at age 50, took up running at the age of 40 to become a better mountain climber. In 1975, d'Elia started going into Manhattan to race with New York Road Runners, the only races in the area. She made friends with Nina Kuscisk, Fred Lebow, Ted Corbitt, and Kathrine Switzer, and was recruited to run with a female elite tea...

Sika Henry has made a name for herself in triathlon and in running. She became the first African American woman to qualify for her pro card in triathlon in 2021, and in 2022, she broke the Virginia state 100K Road Record. At the 2020 Tidewater Striders Marathon, she finished in 2:57:13, earning herself a spot on " The List " of American-born Black women to break three hours in the marathon. She is...

PattiSue Plumer, now the women's cross country and distance coach at the University of Texas, was a professional distance runner in the late 80s and early 90s. PattiSue was a two-time NCAA champion and nine-time All American at Stanford. She went on to win four U.S. national titles and make two Olympic teams, placing 13th in the 3K at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and fifth in the 3K and 10th in the 150...

Amy Begley started running at age 10, and nearly immediately set a goal of reaching the Olympics. After 20 years of hard work, she succeeded, coming in third in the 10,000 meters in the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials to earn a spot in Beijing. Several years later, she was transitioning away from her full-time running career at the same time the Road Runners Club of America (RRCA) was embarking on a proj...

Erika Kemp didn't start running until her freshman year of high school, and went on to attend North Carolina State University; afterward, she trained with Boston Athletic Association's pro team for four years. She recently made a sponsor and coaching change (she's now with Brooks and coach Kurt Benninger) and moved up the marathon, running 2:33:57 in her debut at the 2023 Boston Marathon. Her time...

Mary Wittenberg's successes include being the first female CEO and president of a major sports organization, New York Road Runners; fighting for equal pay for professional female runners; being hand picked by Richard Branson to lead his Virgin Sports start-up; and, becoming a recognized and forceful leader of women's agendas in the male-dominated world of track and field and road running. One of h...

Eileen Claugus grew up in the Sacramento, California area, where she remains somewhat of a local running celebrity to this day. Claugus remembers competing in her first race in a cross-country meet in 1967. She went on to set a national high school mile record of four minutes and 40 seconds, which stood for 10 years. She continued to compete, placing second at the World Cross Country Championships...

Marie Mulder's running career was brief but triumphant—she started in the sport just before her 14th birthday, when a local coach recruited her. The next year, at the 1965 National AAU Track & Field Championships, she won both the 800 meters and the 1,500 meters—the first time women were allowed to compete there at a distance beyond the half-mile. That earned her a spot in the U.S.-Russia meet in...