Marathon · 1960s onward
Kathrine Switzer
Finished the race an official tried to physically remove her from.
1967
She entered Boston as K.V. Switzer and was issued bib 261. Miles in, a race official ran onto the course and tried to tear the number off her. Her companions blocked him. She finished.
What the photographs did
The images went around the world. Women were not officially allowed to run Boston until 1972, and the Olympic marathon for women did not exist until 1984. Her finish is one of the specific things that moved those dates.
She kept running
She was not a symbolic entrant, she was a serious runner, and the distinction matters to how the story gets told. She won the New York City Marathon in 1974, and her best time was 2:51:37 for second place at Boston in 1975.
The long game
She spent decades afterwards building women's racing, campaigning for the Olympic event and running Boston again fifty years later at 70, wearing 261 again. The number is now retired.
Some of what you are training for outlasts the race. Keep going long enough to find out what.
All 26 case studies. Profiles are factual and drawn from the public record. Where a performance carries an asterisk, this app says so rather than leaving it out.