Going the distance: Female runners hit the road

By Steve Ritchie

No one participating in or cheering on the runners at the Homer’s Classic 8K on Aug. 8 will be surprised that there are women running in the 27th annual edition of this Silverton road race. In recent years, females as young as 8 and as old as 80 have participated in the Homer 8K, a distance just under 5 miles.

However, go back a few decades and things were quite different. Not that long ago women were not even allowed to compete in distance running events.

The Boston Marathon, which takes place every April, is one of the most well-known races in America.

Thousands of recreational runners train for months to qualify for the 26.2 mile race, and, for many, running there is a peak experience.

Women, though, weren’t always a part of it. When Kathrine Switzer, a 20-year-old Syracuse University junior, entered in 1967 as “K. Switzer,” the race director attempted to tackle her and tear her number off to force her out of the race. With the help of her boyfriend and coach, who were running with her, Switzer was able to eventually finish, but it took another five years for women to be included in the race.

The Summer Olympic Games were even less accepting of female distance runners. In 1972, the longest event for women track athletes at the Munich Olympics was the 800-meter competition, an event that is not even considered a true distance race. The women’s marathon was not adopted in the Olympics until 1984, just 25 years ago.

The prevailing view until fairly recently was that women were physically incapable of such physical exertion.

But times have changed. Last month’s inaugural Rock ’n’ Roll Seattle Marathon and Half Marathon attracted 15,541 runners for the two races. Fifty-five percent of the marathon competitors and 73 percent of the half-marathon competitors were women. And there were no reports of exertion problems.

Susan Gallagher, who has offered beginning walking and running clinics for women in Salem for more than 20 years, said “In the early ’90s, males (in road races) outnumbered females by over two to one. Now there are way more females than males running marathons and half marathons – as many as two-thirds female to one-third male.”

Gallagher sees all age groups showing up in her clinics, but she said women in their 40s are the most numerous.

“I have some (women) in their 60s and even 70s starting walking. The running group is more women in their 30s and 40s. They like the camaraderie; they like the support of other females who also have goals for a healthy lifestyle . . . they say we’re going to get together at such and such a place and time and they don’t want to let the others down.”

Silverton runner and recent retiree Pam Craig started running 14 years ago at age 48 due to stress and found that running helped her feel better.

“It was winter,” she recalled, “and I would pretend to take the dog for a walk in the dark – I started walking-running in the cover of darkness. I didn’t even tell Joe (her husband). I’m not sure why this felt like the thing to do, it just did. It turned out to really help my stress level and I have been running on and off since then.”

Dorothy Brown-Kwaiser, interpretive park ranger at Silver Falls State Park, ran her first marathon at age 22.

Since then she says she has done another marathon and “a good dozen half-marathons . . . I made a special point last year to run a 30K race (18.6 miles) up in Portland on my 30th birthday. In general, I do a marathon or half-marathon a year.”

Like Craig and scores of other runners, the Silverton resident continues running because of what she gets from it.

“A friend of mine once said, ‘You must really love running.’ I was quiet for a moment and then replied, ‘You know what, I don’t.’ And it is true, I do not love to run. However, I ‘believe’ in running. It is one of the things that keeps me healthy and happy … Running, for me, is a time for meditation, a time for reflection. My shoes are my own little therapists. If I go more than a few days without running, I (and those around me) can tell.”

Silverton resident and college student Emma Ritchie, 22, started to train this year for what will be her first marathon. What began as a kind of a dare has now become something of a personal quest.

“It all started with my boyfriend who playfully suggested that we run a marathon together,” Ritchie said. “At the time I was overweight and unhappy with my body and eating habits, so I took him up on it and began running again. However, the reason for running the marathon has now shifted. When the pounds started to melt off, I felt more alive and focused and began to ache for runs. It is a very powerful feeling when you get done with an hour-long run and I am now hooked on that.”

Better long-term health, stress relief, weight loss, just plain feeling good – with 30 million adult runners in the U.S., there must be at least a million or so reasons that women lace up their shoes and start running every day.

Kathrine Switzer might be amazed at what she and other pioneer women runners started just 40+ years ago.