I am delighted to announce that my book Marathon Woman is being re-released in a special 50th Anniversary edition for the upcoming Boston Marathon! And take a look–it’s been reviewed in the New York Times! As if all this isn’t cool enough, the author of the article is Lela Moore, who is running with me and Team 261 Fearless in the Boston Marathon in April! You go, Lela! With huge thanks from all of us!
Women Who Run, and Write About It, New York Times
By Lela Moore, Published January 19, 2017
…Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon with an official number (albeit registered under her initials as K.V. Switzer to obfuscate her sex, and wearing men’s sweats her coach had rescued from the locker room at Syracuse University, her alma mater), chronicled that story in a memoir called “Marathon Woman,” first published in 2009. She likewise addresses the importance of community, despite her status as the lone female runner while training for that historic run.
Ms. Switzer said that while a community of other women was rare when she began running, she initially found community with men, including the members of the Syracuse cross-country team. “They were extremely welcoming,” she said, “and that was a huge thing in the late 1960s.”
Many years later, Ms. Switzer said, the women who initially thought she was “strange” for running evolved into her biggest champions, and the women who began to write to her from around the globe saying that her story changed their lives became “my blood sisters,” she said.
“Marathon Woman” will be relaunched in April, with a new introduction by Ms. Switzer, just as she prepares to commemorate the 50th anniversary of her first running of Boston. “Women’s writing is about a sense of self-discovery,” she said. “Running empowers all of us, men and women, but for women it’s transformational.”
Ms. Switzer recently launched a nonprofit called 261Fearless — the number is a reference to the bib number she wore during her historic Boston race — that helps to train coaches and provides social media access to women’s running clubs around the world. “It’s not about running,” she said. “It’s about changing women’s lives.”
