What Should the Next 50 Years of Women’s Running Look Like?

September 16, 2021

Olympian Molly Huddle charts a course for continued progress.

Women distance runners in the 1960s and ’70s had to expend a lot of time and energy creating the race, seeking training information and coaches, or fighting for their spot in a men’s race. The sport was only for those bold enough to shed the comfortable cloak of “normal” and run around in improvised running gear like bathing suit tops and jean shorts, with other female teammates few and far between.

Women’s gear didn’t exist, women’s teams didn’t exist, and role models for women in sport were sparse. But the primordially programmed drive to run and all the physical and mental benefits that come from it were still there in half the population, buried like a secret that only some women were brave (or weird!) enough to acknowledge. Runner’s World