Hello! Welcome back to The Footprint – and happy Friday.

📬 Today: Edith Zuschmann, co-founder of 261 Fearless, on drawing more women into running.

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Fearless movement

This sport has changed immeasurably over the past six decades. In April 1967 Kathrine Switzer, a young student at Syracuse Uni­versity, became the first woman to officially enter the Boston Marathon. 

After signing her entry form K. V. Switzer, she got a warm welcome from many men at the starting line. But four miles in, an angry race official tried to remove her from the course, grabbing her by the shoulder, and then the shirt, as he attempted to rip off her race number: 261. 

Switzer broke free, initially scared and humiliated. Then she got angry. “I knew if I quit,” she later wrote, “nobody would ever believe that women had the capability to run 26-plus miles.” 

Switzer did not quit. After crossing the finish line, she was peppered with questions by a gaggle of “very crabby” reporters: 

The tide turned. 

In 1972 the US governing body for marathons lifted its ban on women’s participation, and – after a sit-in by six women at the New York City Marathon – swiftly ditched an insistence on a separate start from the men. 

Nina Kuscsik was the first woman to officially win the Boston Marathon in 1972. Switzer won the New York City Marathon in 1974.

The days of female runners being stigmatized by the public “are gone now,” Tony Kornheiser wrote in The New York Times two years later. “A runner is neither man nor woman at 26 miles 385 yards.”

“You’re a runner,” added Switzer, who went on to create the Avon International Running Circuit, a global series of races that helped set the stage for the Olympics to include a women’s marathon from 1984.

Over the past five decades, more than 250,000 women have finished the Boston Marathon. The vast majority were able to cross the line without a crabby reporter asking if they were a suffragette. 

But the wider world has not changed immeasurably. 

“Honestly, so much hasn’t changed,” said Edith Zuschmann, CEO, president and co-founder of 261 Fearless. “People, in general, are still facing a lot of challenges. How many times do you still hear you're not good enough, or you don't belong here?” 

What has changed is “access – acceptance – of women, being active, being part of this wonderful bigger picture of sport,” she said in a recent interview. “But the individual battles, I would say they are still the same.” 

Switzer and Zuschmann established 261 Fearless, a non-profit and global women’s running network, in 2015. With clubs in more than a dozen different countries, from Austria to Zambia, it has trained some 550 women to be coaches.

Back in 1967 Switzer kept running because she believed “in her own abilities, but also in the abilities of women,” said Zuschmann. “261 became a symbol for women overcoming fear and challenges... finding self-worth, and proving they can do it.”

Zuschmann started what would be the first of many running groups in 2012, in her hometown of Klagenfurt, Austria. A handful of women showed up. It grew over time. The priority was not pace or distance, but camaraderie and self-belief.

There are many women who want to run, but fail to connect with a focus on exertion, performance and competition, according to Zuschmann. “It's often connected to pain, sweat, blood and tears. But that's not the case,” she said. “You don't need to go really beyond the red zone.”

Each 261 Fearless group is designed to be a safe space for women to run together, so they don’t have to run alone, or part of a mixed group: somewhere that provides the comfort and confidence needed to get into the sport, and experience its benefits. 

“Often we are so anxious to fail,” said Zuschmann. “But failing is such a gift – because then we grow, and we learn.”

Those crabby reporters are no longer on the finish line of a marathon. But scrolling through social media or making your way through the real world, their descendants are not so hard to find.

“We get judged in so many areas and aspects of our life,” said Zuschmann. “Do you perform well? How do you look, especially as women? What do you do? We are constantly exposed to judgement.

“When I talk about a ‘safe space,’ it's just that you can be you. It doesn't matter how big you are, or how old you are, or where you're coming from. You're welcome, and you can just move.”

AROUND AND ABOUT

⏱️ The Speed Project is go. The fiendish 340-mile race from Santa Monica pier to the welcome sign on the Las Vegas strip got going early on Monday, with its largest ever solo field of 41 athletes. Parley Hannah was first to finish, in just under 86 hours. The relay got underway an hour ago. Follow the race.

⛰️ Why would anyone run a marathon? People like things that are really hard, Alex Hutchinson writes in an Atlantic essay from his forthcoming book, The Explorer’s Gene. The enormity of a task often is why people pursue it in the first place.

🤫 Sometimes you just need to put your head down, according to Heather Mayer Irvine, who ran a marathon and didn't tell anyone. She explained her thinking in a story for Outside: that by removing external pressure, she could focus on training, listen to her body, and run freely without worrying about what others thought.

☀️ What makes a good race? Fresh from the Behind the Rocks 30K in Utah, Sarah Lavender Smith put forward a strong list of factors in her latest newsletter – from feeling motivated and finding camaraderie to finishing fast(er) – which led her to celebrate.

🥇 Jakob Ingebrigtsen clinched the double at the World Athletics Indoor Championships. The Norwegian swept the men's 1500m and 3000m in Nanjing, China, becoming only the second man to win two gold medals at the same World Indoors meet... Ethiopia's Gudaf Tsegay dominated the women's 1500m, setting a championship record of 3:54.86... Britain's Amber Anning won the women's 400m... and the USA's Grant Holloway extended his decade-old streak in the 60m hurdles.

📍Louisville, KY: Crossing the Big Four Bridge into Jeffersonville, Indiana, earlier this month.

RECENT EDITIONS

• #07 Boston Beckons | with a first-timer and a last-timer

• #06 Letting It Run | with Honolulu Marathon president Jim Barahal

• #05 Listen Up | with three-time Six Star marathoner Thomas Eller

Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think: just hit ‘reply,’ or email me.

Have a great weekend.

– Callum