Kathrine Switzer told her story to producer Caro Rolando for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.
There was a kerfuffle behind me and I turned, and at the last minute I saw the most ferocious face I’ve ever seen in my life, And he screamed in my face, “Get the hell out of my race, and give me those numbers!”
I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area.
I started running when I was 12 years old. I had told my parents that I wanted to be a high school cheerleader the next year. And my father said, “You don’t want to do that. You want to have people cheer for you. The game is not on the sidelines, the game’s on the field.” He said you should run a mile a day, and make the field hockey team in your high school. I ran a mile a day all that summer, and he was right. By the time autumn came around, I was one of the best players on the team. Not because I had any skills, but because nobody could catch me and I never got tired. That’s when I fell in love with running.
When I got to Syracuse University, there were no sports whatsoever for women. I was really gutsy because…
