That’s probably why the Boston officials accepted the entry, because they thought it was from a guy and not from a woman. But I signed my name with my initials, K.V. I don’t believe any woman can do it.” So, finally I said, “OK, we’re on.”Īrnie Briggs said, “You’ve got to sign up for the Boston Marathon if you’re going to run this.” I signed the entry form. He said “No, you’d have to show me in practice. And I said, “What are you talking about?” I told him that a woman by the name of Roberta Gibb had actually jumped out of the bushes and run the Boston Marathon the year before, and he absolutely refused to believe it. One night I told him I wanted to run the Boston Marathon, and he said a woman can’t possibly do it. And he took me under his wing and ran with me every day. He was a really fine distance runner, and in fact still held the New York State record in the marathon. We’ve never had a girl out here before.” One guy in particular, his name was Arnie Briggs. All of those guys came running over to me and saying, “This is great. He was surprised, and the team was wonderful. So the pressure was on for me to show up. I knew he was lying because when I closed his office door, I heard him burst out laughing to his colleagues and say, “I guess I got rid of that one.” But if you wanted to come and work out with the team, we wouldn’t mind.” I went and asked the men’s track coach if I could run on the men’s cross country team. I was really gutsy because I had been playing sports running I was now running up to three miles a day.
When I got to Syracuse University, there were no sports whatsoever for women. Not because I had any skills, but because nobody could catch me and I never got tired. By the time autumn came around, I was one of the best players on the team. I ran a mile a day all that summer, and he was right. The game is not on the sidelines, the game’s on the field.” He said you should run a mile a day, and make the field hockey team in your high school. And my father said, “You don’t want to do that. I had told my parents that I wanted to be a high school cheerleader the next year.
I started running when I was 12 years old. There was a kerfuffle behind me and I turned, and at the last minute I saw the most ferocious face I’ve ever seen in my life, And he screamed in my face, “Get the hell out of my race, and give me those numbers!” It has been edited for length and clarity. Kathrine Switzer told her story to producer Caro Rolando for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast.
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