I realised I was not as fast as the guys but I could run forever. It sounded like the most heroic event in the world. I thought this guy schleps through the snow training so he can go to the Boston Marathon for one day and be a hero in his own life. He had run 15 Boston Marathons and he started coaching me and telling me stories about the Boston Marathon. “I was training in Syracuse, New York, where I was at university and there I met a guy who was 50 and coach for the cross-country team. I was just a 20-year-old kid who wanted to run,” she says. “I had no intention of making history that day. She will start the elite women’s and wheelchair races and then join the 40,000 other runners on the streets of the capital this morning for her first London Marathon and 42nd overall. Now aged 71, Switzer is guest of honour in London this weekend, part of the London marathon’s #spiritoflondon campaign. Switzer slipped through the net because organisers saw her name on the entry list and presumed she was a man. The only way women could take part was to join the race from the sidelines and run without a number. The rules did not explicitly prevent women from running, but it was tradition rigorously upheld by the organisers. But Switzer slipped through by signing her name on the entry form for the Boston marathon by using her initials, KV Switzer. It was 1967 and women were not allowed to run more than 1,500 metres in sanctioned races. It is one of many moments that Kathrine Switzer recounts as she talks about her memories of becoming the first woman to officially run a marathon. “One guy shouted at me, ‘you should be back in the kitchen making dinner for your husband’.” The thousands of spectators who line marathon routes are famous for screaming encouragement, but it has not always been that way.
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