Switzer," and went to the university infirmary to get a fitness certificate. I filled in my AAU number, plunked down $3 cash as entry fee, signed as I always sign my name, "K.V. We checked the rule book and entry form there was nothing about gender in the marathon. He said it was wrong to run without registering and, besides, I could get in serious trouble with the Amateur Athletic Union, our sport's strict governing body. The next day Arnie came to my dorm and insisted that I sign up for the race. When we finished, I hugged him ecstatically-and he passed out cold. Toward the end of our 31-mile run, he began turning grey. As we came down our home stretch, it felt too easy, so I suggested that we run another five-mile loop just to feel extra confident about Boston. Three weeks before the marathon, Arnie and I ran our 26-mile trial. Hot damn, I thought, I have a coach, a training partner, a plan, and a goal: the biggest race in the world-Boston. If you ran the distance in practice, I'd be the first to take you to Boston." I grinned through the gloom and flakes.
Then he added, "If any woman could do it, you could, but you would have to prove it to me. "No dame ever ran the Boston Marathon!" he shouted, as skidding motorists nearly killed us. "No woman can run the Boston Marathon," Arnie fired back.Īrnie insisted the distance was too long for fragile women to run and exploded when I said that Roberta Gibb had jumped into the race and finished it the previous April. I loved listening to them-until this night when I snapped and said, "Oh, let's quit talking about the Boston Marathon and run the damn thing!" To cajole me through tough evening sessions like this, Arnie told and retold stories of famous Bostons. He was excited to see a woman-the first-come out to run, and took slowpoke me under his training wing. Arnie was actually the university mailman and a veteran of 15 Boston Marathons. That's where I met 50-year-old Arnie, who had trained for years with the team. I was a 19-year-old journalism student at Syracuse University, and since there was no women's running team there or anywhere else for that matter, I began training unofficially with the men's cross-country team. It was in Syracuse, New York, where God first invented snow and never let up. On a dark six-mile run in a wild snowstorm in mid-December 1966, I had a terrible argument with my otherwise kindly old coach, Arnie Briggs.
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