Marathon Woman Pt. 2

So it's down to the final inning. 20 days to go! I had my last 32k run yesterday and it went amazingly! I'm so close that it is finally becoming a reality. I trained for so many months that it was always a distant, far-off goal. But now it's almost here! One more 23k next weekend and then I start tapering.

But there is something else I wanted to talk about here. There is a reason I titled these entries "Marathon Woman". There is a fantastic book I have been meaning to bring up.

Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. Her story is amazing and very inspiring. When she was running her marathon, a race official tried to physically throw her off the road because he was so outraged that a woman had the audacity to run a marathon, and that was in the late sixties (so really, not that long ago). I think all athletes and all women should read this book. Just reading the struggles she had to go through to simply just run is astonishing, and completely eye-opening. And by run, I don't even mean in Boston. I mean just to run down the street. Women would try to run her over as she trained because they were so outraged that she was challenging the status quo. Can you believe that it was thought to be dangerous for women to run farther than 400m because their uteruses would fall out.
I know this sounds like a rant, but it is something that just seems so ridiculous to me, yet it also makes me feel very appreciative for everything I can do now that I don't have to fight for.
Another book I recommend (although I never finished reading it, school got in the way) is called Run Like a Girl (appropriate title, no?). This book discusses how incorporating sports into life can be beneficial. It also discusses the challenges women have faced and still face when it comes to the athletic world. Once upon a time, it was revolutionary when someone decided to make athletic clothes designed specifically for women, instead of just giving them the smaller, shrunken down versions of the mens clothes (in the colour pink, of course). It also talks about the attitudes of men (some men, not all!! and some of this is also in the past) towards athletic women- they are either threatened by them, or under the impression that they are at a more superior level of athleticism than women.
Reading this stuff really lights a fire under my butt. It's incredible to read the stories of other women. It's a reminder not to take everything for granted, and it's also a reminder to be appreciative of what they went through. Even as recently as 20 years ago, when my mom started running, it was a male-dominated profession. My mom even had to wear the shrunken down version of the men's athletic clothes that are mentioned in the book.
It's amazing how far we've come, isn't it?