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Starting Line 1928

Running Historians (Various)

Starting Line 1928 is an oral history project documenting the lived experiences of female distance running pioneers

history running

All Episodes

55:51

38 | Francie Larrieu Smith

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/10/26

Francie Larrieu Smith was the youngest woman 1500-meter runner and the oldest woman in any track and field event the U.S. ever sent to the Olympics. Her running career spans five Olympics and multiple distances. Her best Olympic finish was fifth place in the 10,000-meter event at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the first running of the event. She was the flag bearer for the U. S. Olympic Team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. During her 30-year athletic career, she established 36 United States records and

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59:47

37 | Krystine Beneke

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/10/12

Krystine Beneke started her athletic career at a very young age, dancing for the Houston Ballet Academy in Houston. Simultaneously, she began running with her father through their neighborhood. Eventually, Krystine began competing in middle-school and high-school track events. In middle school, she competed in 400s and hurdles. In high school, she enjoyed a variety of distances and events from 300 hurdles to 4 x 4 to two milers. After college, she began a career in banking—and started to focus on

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01:45:43

36 | PattiSue Plumer (part 2)

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/10/05

This week, we bring you the second part of the story of Olympian PattiSue Plumer— a professional distance runner in the late 80s and early 90s. PattiSue was a two-time NCAA champion and nine-time All American at Stanford. She went on to win four U.S. national titles and make two Olympic teams, placing 13th in the 3K at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and fifth in the 3K and 10th in the 1500 at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. She was also the first American woman to break 15 minutes in the 5k, setting the

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01:10:28

35 | Janet Cain

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/09/14

Janet Cain is a former USA Track & Field National Marathon Champion in both the 55-59 and 60-64 age group. She set a Napa Valley Marathon record for that latter age group in 2014, finishing the race in 3:43:39. Her life has been a series of exciting wins and heartbreaking losses. Now 72 and living in Sonoma, CA, where she has a clinical psychology practice, Cain is still running strong and posting faster times now that she is working with a coach for the first time in her running career. The biggest

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49:30

34 | Lou Peyton

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/08/24

Lou Peyton was one of the first women to complete the Grand Slam of ultrarunning, completing four 100-mile races in the summer of 1989. And in fact, she went on to complete a fifth 100-miler that same year. Peyton started running just a few weeks after her first child was born in 1968. She's also the co-founder, with her husband, of the Arkansas Traveler, a 100 mile race that's still going on today.

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01:21:10

33 | Julia Chase-Brand

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/08/10

On Thanksgiving Day 1961, at 19 years old, Julia Chase-Brand turned heads when she defied the orders of the Amateur Athletic Union and entered and completed the historic Manchester Road Race. Her participation in the widely followed event opened the door for women’s cross-country later that spring and in turn a great number of other changes allowing women to run distance events. Julia faced discrimination from both men and women. Among many things, she was told she’d risk her fertility and ruin her

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01:13:28

32 | Ingrid Walters

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/07/20

Running was not Ingrid Walters’ first love. Nor was it her second, or her third. She didn’t run in earnest until she turned 41, at which point she immediately began (quite literally) making up for lost time. After swimming competitively through the first two years of college, she began lifeguarding, and picked up beach running to stay in shape. She enjoyed it enough to accept a college classmate’s “dare” to run the 1993 Los Angeles Marathon, which she completed in 4:03:00. After that, she

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01:45:52

31 | Toshiko D'Elia

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/07/06

Toshiko d’Elia, the first female in the world to run a sub-three-hour marathon at age 50, took up running at the age of 40 to become a better mountain climber. In 1975, d’Elia started going into Manhattan to race with New York Road Runners, the only races in the area. She made friends with Nina Kuscisk, Fred Lebow, Ted Corbitt, and Kathrine Switzer, and was recruited to run with a female elite team, Atalanta, coached by Bob Glover. She was unstoppable and was given the nickname Seabiscuit after the

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48:12

30 | Sika Henry

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/06/22

Sika Henry has made a name for herself in triathlon and in running. She became the first African American woman to qualify for her pro card in triathlon in 2021, and in 2022, she broke the Virginia state 100K Road Record. At the 2020 Tidewater Striders Marathon, she finished in 2:57:13, earning herself a spot on “The List“ of American-born Black women to break three hours in the marathon. She is a two-time champion of the One City Marathon. In April 2023, Henry ran the Boston Marathon as part of

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02:11:03

29 | PattiSue Plumer (part 1)

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/06/08

PattiSue Plumer, now the women's cross country and distance coach at the University of Texas, was a professional distance runner in the late 80s and early 90s. PattiSue was a two-time NCAA champion and nine-time All American at Stanford. She went on to win four U.S. national titles and make two Olympic teams, placing 13th in the 3K at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and fifth in the 3K and 10th in the 1500 at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. She was also the first American woman to break 15 minutes in the 5k,

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46:50

28 | Amy Begley

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/05/25

Amy Begley started running at age 10, and nearly immediately set a goal of reaching the Olympics. After 20 years of hard work, she succeeded, coming in third in the 10,000 meters in the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials to earn a spot in Beijing. Several years later, she was transitioning away from her full-time running career at the same time the Road Runners Club of America (RRCA) was embarking on a project to preserve the history of women’s running. Amy signed on and got to work tracking down some of the

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32:38

27 | Erika Kemp

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/05/11

Erika Kemp didn't start running until her freshman year of high school, and went on to attend North Carolina State University; afterward, she trained with Boston Athletic Association's pro team for four years. She recently made a sponsor and coaching change (she's now with Brooks and coach Kurt Benninger) and moved up the marathon, running 2:33:57 in her debut at the 2023 Boston Marathon. Her time made her the fastest Black American female marathoner in history, a title that was previously held by

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41:37

26 | Mary Wittenberg

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/04/27

Mary Wittenberg's successes include being the first female CEO and president of a major sports organization, New York Road Runners; fighting for equal pay for professional female runners; being hand picked by Richard Branson to lead his Virgin Sports start-up; and, becoming a recognized and forceful leader of women’s agendas in the male-dominated world of track and field and road running. One of her most recognized legacies is turning the New York City Marathon into the largest one-day worldwide

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29:28

25 | Eileen Claugus

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/04/13

Eileen Claugus grew up in the Sacramento, California area, where she remains somewhat of a local running celebrity to this day. Claugus remembers competing in her first race in a cross-country meet in 1967. She went on to set a national high school mile record of four minutes and 40 seconds, which stood for 10 years. She continued to compete, placing second at the World Cross Country Championships in 1971 and serving as an alternate to the U.S. Olympic team in the 1,500 meters in 1972, at age 16

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42:26

24 | Marie Mulder

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/03/30

Marie Mulder’s running career was brief but triumphant—she started in the sport just before her 14th birthday, when a local coach recruited her. The next year, at the 1965 National AAU Track & Field Championships, she won both the 800 meters and the 1,500 meters—the first time women were allowed to compete there at a distance beyond the half-mile. That earned her a spot in the U.S.-Russia meet in Kiev later that year, where days after her 15th birthday, she ran 2:07.3 in the 800 meters to place

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53:46

23 | Chris McKenzie

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/03/16

Chris McKenzie was born in London in 1931, and was diagnosed at a young age with a serious bone infection that required her to wear a brace. While she was recovering, she had the good fortune to meet a famed runner named Anne Stone, who helped her recover, encouraged her to get into running and, eventually, became her coach. Her talent was quickly evident over a range of distances, including the 880 meters and longer cross country courses. In 1953, she met American Olympian Gordon Mckenzie, and

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01:08:30

22 | Grace Butcher

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/02/16

As a child in Chardon, Ohio, Butcher realized she was fast at a young age. In ninth grade, she learned about track and field as a sport that was only available to men—and as a sophomore, she sought to change that, asking the school's track coach to start a girls' team. When he refused, her mother contacted Stella Walsh, the 1932 Olympic champion in the 100 meters and then-coach of the Polish Falcons, a boys and girls track club in Cleveland, Ohio. A couple of days each week, Butcher’s mother would

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36:23

21 | Randi Bromka Young

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/02/02

Randi Bromka Young can pinpoint the moment her running career started: She woke up one day when she was 31 and ran as far as she could from her house. She only traveled a mile that day, but from there, the transition to running ultramarathons was “rather quick,” in Young’s words. Her first race was the famed Boulder Bolder 10K and then some short summer races and a short triathlon. By 1987, she had run six marathons; in July of that year, Young ran her first ultramarathon, the Vail Valley 50 Mile;

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01:07:38

20 | Sally Edwards

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/01/19

Sally “Sal” Edwards is no stranger to being at the front of endurance races and the forefront of revolutions in running retail and exercise physiology. She didn’t pick up running until after college, but eventually became a Nike-sponsored runner and competed in a number of marathons, including the inaugural US Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984. Her marathons were interspersed with ultramarathons—In 1980 she won the Western States Endurance Run—both of which were ultimately supplanted by triathlons

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01:38:41

19 | Cheryl Treworgy

Starting Line 1928 ·

2023/01/05

In December 1971, Cheryl Bridges (now Cheryl Treworgy) became the first woman in the world to break 2:50 in the marathon. Treworgy decided to try running in 1964, when she was in high school; though she had no girls' teams to train with, she soon began competing and excelling. Eventually, she ran on five world cross-country teams and came in fourth at the 1969 international cross-country championships. A little more than three decades after Treworgy’s world-record marathon, one of her daughters,

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59 results

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