Outside: She's In My Rear View

Are Women Closing in on Men at the Boston Marathon?
Alex Hutchinson/Outside, Jan 28, 2019

A detailed analysis of historical Boston results wades into the long-running debate on sex differences in endurance

Back in 1992, scientists at UCLA made a surprising prediction in Nature. Since women’s marathon times were improving more quickly than men’s, they forecast that women would surpass men in 1998. While that didn’t come to pass, the idea that women might be closing the gap in endurance races persists, thanks to the feats of athletes like Jasmin Paris, the ultrarunner who shattered the overall course record in the 168-mile Montane Spine Race in Britain earlier this month, and Camille Herron, who beat the entire field while setting a women’s 24-hour running record in December.

But you can only learn so much from individual stories, no matter how remarkable. That’s where a new analysis in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research comes in...

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Runner's World: That Guy

Who Is the Guy Who Tells You to Have a Good Race? 
Ali Nolan/Runner's World, Jan 10, 2019

It’s 32°F at the start of the Philadelphia Marathon and the corrals are packed with runners bobbing up and down as the anthem plays. One of them, Gary Collina, stares straight ahead and reminds himself why he’s running today. He turns to a woman standing next to him, offers a fist bump, wishes her luck. Then turns to another runner, repeats the gesture...

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Runner's World: Prognostication for the Running Nation

The 8 Trends, Events, and Phenomena We’re Watching in 2018
From the women’s marathon to a hot hashtag (seriously!), the new year of running looks like an exciting one.
Runner’s World/December 20


Here at Runner’s World, we’re pretty excited for the New Year. How could we not be, given everything that happened in 2017? We saw Eliud Kipchoge almost break the two-hour marathon barrier, and we saw American runners win for the first time in decades at Chicago and New York. But what will 2018 bring? We’re hesitant to make out-and-out predictions (as runners, we know anything can happen!), but here are eight things—call them trends, phenomena, events, whatever—we’ve got our eyes on in the next 12 months...


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Outside: Joy In The Workout

How to Find Joy in Every Workout
Kathrine Switzer on the lessons she's learned after a lifetime of running. Nonrunners, take note.
Molly Mirhashem/Outside, August 1 2017
Kathrine Switzer started running almost 60 years ago. In 1967, she became the first woman to enter and run the Boston Marathon when it was open only to men. This past April, 50 years after that historic race, Switzer returned to Boston and ran it again at age 70. In between those milestones, she’s run dozens of marathons, winning the New York City Marathon in 1974 and clocking a personal best of 2:51 at Boston in 1975...
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Outside: Smartphone A Waste For Elite-Beater

This 13-Year-Old Girl Is Already Beating Elite Runners
Better learn Lanie Szuch's name, because you're about to start hearing it—a lot
Katie Arnold/Outside: May 26, 2017


When Alyana (aka Lanie) Szuch toes the line to defend her title at the GoPro Mountain Games 5K trail race on June 9, she’ll face more than the usual scrutiny. Szuch is 13. The trail running phenom’s victory wasn’t beginner’s luck: Szuch was third woman in the 10K at last year’s games, the second woman at the 2015 Xterra National Championship half marathon last September, and seventh at the U.S. Mountain Running Championships in 2015, when she was only 11...


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Outside: Life Lessons

Life Lessons from Running Legend Joan Benoit Samuelson
The Olympic marathon champ—who hopes to become the first woman over 60 to run a sub-3-hour marathon this fall—shares her hard-fought wisdom
Martin Fritz Huber May 24, 2017

Last week, women’s running pioneer Joan Benoit Samuelson celebrated her 60th birthday. A few days later, she ran the Sugarloaf Marathon in her home state of Maine in 3:12:21, winning her age group by a margin of more than seventy minutes. The 1984 Olympic marathon gold medalist now has her sights on the Chicago Marathon in October, where she hopes to become the first woman over 60 to run a sub-3-hour marathon. We wouldn’t bet against her...

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IAAF: Women's-Only WR

Keitany breaks women’s-only world record at London Marathon
IAAF, 23 April 2017

Kenya’s Mary Keitany took 41 seconds off the women’s-only world record* at the Virgin Money London Marathon, running 2:17:01 at the IAAF Gold Label Road Race on Sunday (23). Keitany said in the build-up to this year’s race she was in shape to break Paula Radcliffe’s mark of 2:17:42 and while she demurred when asked about the possibility of bettering Radcliffe’s outright mark of 2:15:25, Keitany was running minutes inside Radcliffe’s schedule in the first half...

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Outside Online: Pain and Getting Chicked

The Longer the Race, the Stronger We Get 
Meaghen Brown//Outside Online, Apr 11, 2017

 At the outer edges of endurance sports, something interesting is happening: women are beating men. 

Among the world’s most celebrated long-distance footraces, the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc is known for being particularly brutal.

The 106-mile course through the French, Swiss, and Italian Alps climbs more than 33,000 feet as it loops around its namesake peak. The weather can be savage—heavy rain, frigid nights, hot and humid days. In August 2013, Rory Bosio took off from the start line without grand expectations, having never won a major event. She trailed well behind the leaders for the first six hours. But as the race stretched into the evening and most competitors slowed, ­Bosio held her pace. When the lanky, brown-haired American runner in pink shoes and a blue running skirt crossed the finish line in 22 hours 37 minutes, she’d destroyed the women’s record by two and a half hours. Bosio took seventh place overall, becoming the first woman to crack the top ten at the event and beating dozens of elite pro men...

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Washington Post via Outside Online: Shoes? Check. Hijab? Check.

A handful of women ignored Iranian orders by running Tehran marathon outdoors alongside men
Marissa Payne//Washington Post April 7

Backed by the Dutch organizer of what was billed as Iran’s first international marathon in Tehran, a group of women ran alongside men outdoors on Friday, ignoring orders given by an Iranian government official earlier in the week requiring female runners to complete their course apart from men and off the streets in a nearby stadium.

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