Starting Line 1928
43 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 months ago - ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsStarting Line 1928 is an oral history project documenting the lived experiences of female distance running pioneers
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Episodes
42 | Sue Parks
January 25, 2024 11:00 - 46 minutes - 37.7 MBSue Parks has had a storied career as an athlete and coach who continues to break barriers in the NCAA. Today, Sue is the director of cross-country and track and field at her alma mater, Eastern Michigan University. She’s one of the few women leading a track and field program at the Division 1 level. Years before she became a director, Parks was blazing her own path as one of the first women track stars in her home state. Her most memorable race was against Olympic gold medalist Madeline Man...
41 | Patti Catalano Dillon
December 21, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 77.6 MBIn 1980, Patti Catalano (now Patti Catalano Dillon) became the first American woman to break 2:30 in the marathon. She has held American and world records at various distances—including the 5 mile, 10 mile, 10k, 15k, 20k, 30k and half marathon, and she has been inducted into the RRCA Distance Running Hall of Fame. She won the Honolulu Marathon four times and finished second at the Boston Marathon three times, in 1979, 1980 and 1981.
40 | Janet Romayko
November 30, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 63.3 MBJanet Romayko is a veteran of 49 marathons and countless triathlons including the half Ironman distance. But what she is most thrilled with is her 50 consecutive finishes at the Manchester Road Race in Manchester CT, a 4.748-mile race held on Thanksgiving Day started in 1927. She loves running Manchester. “It’s very special to me. My family grew up there, are buried there. It’s a very sweet feeling I have for the town and the community. It’s truly coming home for me. It’s a wonderful experie...
39 | Cheryl Toussaint
November 16, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour - 72.8 MBCheryl Toussaint is the meet director of the Colgate Women’s Games and an Olympic silver medalist She grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and began running with the Atoms Track Club at age 13. There, Coach Fred Thompson nurtured her athletic talent—and encouraged her academically. Cheryl earned an academic scholarship to New York University and kept training with the Atoms, eventually making the Olympics in 1972; she competed in Munich in the 800 meters and 4x400 relay, where she helped...
38 | Francie Larrieu Smith
October 26, 2023 08:00 - 55 minutes - 47.6 MBFrancie Larrieu Smith was the youngest woman 1500-meter runner and the oldest woman in any track and field event the U.S. ever sent to the Olympics. Her running career spans five Olympics and multiple distances. Her best Olympic finish was fifth place in the 10,000-meter event at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the first running of the event. She was the flag bearer for the U. S. Olympic Team at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. During her 30-year athletic career, she established 36 United States reco...
37 | Krystine Beneke
October 12, 2023 08:00 - 59 minutes - 46.3 MBKrystine Beneke started her athletic career at a very young age, dancing for the Houston Ballet Academy in Houston. Simultaneously, she began running with her father through their neighborhood. Eventually, Krystine began competing in middle-school and high-school track events. In middle school, she competed in 400s and hurdles. In high school, she enjoyed a variety of distances and events from 300 hurdles to 4 x 4 to two milers. After college, she began a career in banking—and started to fo...
36 | PattiSue Plumer (part 2)
October 05, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 84.4 MBThis week, we bring you the second part of the story of Olympian PattiSue Plumer— a professional distance runner in the late 80s and early 90s. PattiSue was a two-time NCAA champion and nine-time All American at Stanford. She went on to win four U.S. national titles and make two Olympic teams, placing 13th in the 3K at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and fifth in the 3K and 10th in the 1500 at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. She was also the first American woman to break 15 minutes in the 5k, setting t...
35 | Janet Cain
September 14, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 56.9 MBJanet Cain is a former USA Track & Field National Marathon Champion in both the 55-59 and 60-64 age group. She set a Napa Valley Marathon record for that latter age group in 2014, finishing the race in 3:43:39. Her life has been a series of exciting wins and heartbreaking losses. Now 72 and living in Sonoma, CA, where she has a clinical psychology practice, Cain is still running strong and posting faster times now that she is working with a coach for the first time in her running career. The...
34 | Lou Peyton
August 24, 2023 08:00 - 49 minutes - 40.8 MBLou Peyton was one of the first women to complete the Grand Slam of ultrarunning, completing four 100-mile races in the summer of 1989. And in fact, she went on to complete a fifth 100-miler that same year. Peyton started running just a few weeks after her first child was born in 1968. She's also the co-founder, with her husband, of the Arkansas Traveler, a 100 mile race that's still going on today.
33 | Julia Chase-Brand
August 10, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 66 MBOn Thanksgiving Day 1961, at 19 years old, Julia Chase-Brand turned heads when she defied the orders of the Amateur Athletic Union and entered and completed the historic Manchester Road Race. Her participation in the widely followed event opened the door for women’s cross-country later that spring and in turn a great number of other changes allowing women to run distance events. Julia faced discrimination from both men and women. Among many things, she was told she’d risk her fertility and r...
32 | Ingrid Walters
July 20, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 63.6 MBRunning was not Ingrid Walters’ first love. Nor was it her second, or her third. She didn’t run in earnest until she turned 41, at which point she immediately began (quite literally) making up for lost time. After swimming competitively through the first two years of college, she began lifeguarding, and picked up beach running to stay in shape. She enjoyed it enough to accept a college classmate’s “dare” to run the 1993 Los Angeles Marathon, which she completed in 4:03:00. After that, she ef...
31 | Toshiko D'Elia
July 06, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour - 66.4 MBToshiko d’Elia, the first female in the world to run a sub-three-hour marathon at age 50, took up running at the age of 40 to become a better mountain climber. In 1975, d’Elia started going into Manhattan to race with New York Road Runners, the only races in the area. She made friends with Nina Kuscisk, Fred Lebow, Ted Corbitt, and Kathrine Switzer, and was recruited to run with a female elite team, Atalanta, coached by Bob Glover. She was unstoppable and was given the nickname Seabiscuit af...
30 | Sika Henry
June 22, 2023 08:00 - 48 minutes - 38.9 MBSika Henry has made a name for herself in triathlon and in running. She became the first African American woman to qualify for her pro card in triathlon in 2021, and in 2022, she broke the Virginia state 100K Road Record. At the 2020 Tidewater Striders Marathon, she finished in 2:57:13, earning herself a spot on “The List“ of American-born Black women to break three hours in the marathon. She is a two-time champion of the One City Marathon. In April 2023, Henry ran the Boston Marathon as par...
29 | PattiSue Plumer (part 1)
June 08, 2023 08:00 - 2 hours - 107 MBPattiSue Plumer, now the women's cross country and distance coach at the University of Texas, was a professional distance runner in the late 80s and early 90s. PattiSue was a two-time NCAA champion and nine-time All American at Stanford. She went on to win four U.S. national titles and make two Olympic teams, placing 13th in the 3K at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and fifth in the 3K and 10th in the 1500 at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. She was also the first American woman to break 15 minutes in t...
28 | Amy Begley
May 25, 2023 08:00 - 46 minutes - 40.3 MBAmy Begley started running at age 10, and nearly immediately set a goal of reaching the Olympics. After 20 years of hard work, she succeeded, coming in third in the 10,000 meters in the 2008 U.S. Olympic Trials to earn a spot in Beijing. Several years later, she was transitioning away from her full-time running career at the same time the Road Runners Club of America (RRCA) was embarking on a project to preserve the history of women’s running. Amy signed on and got to work tracking down some...
27 | Erika Kemp
May 11, 2023 08:00 - 32 minutes - 27.5 MBErika Kemp didn't start running until her freshman year of high school, and went on to attend North Carolina State University; afterward, she trained with Boston Athletic Association's pro team for four years. She recently made a sponsor and coaching change (she's now with Brooks and coach Kurt Benninger) and moved up the marathon, running 2:33:57 in her debut at the 2023 Boston Marathon. Her time made her the fastest Black American female marathoner in history, a title that was previously h...
26 | Mary Wittenberg
April 27, 2023 11:35 - 41 minutes - 33.3 MBMary Wittenberg's successes include being the first female CEO and president of a major sports organization, New York Road Runners; fighting for equal pay for professional female runners; being hand picked by Richard Branson to lead his Virgin Sports start-up; and, becoming a recognized and forceful leader of women’s agendas in the male-dominated world of track and field and road running. One of her most recognized legacies is turning the New York City Marathon into the largest one-day world...
25 | Eileen Claugus
April 13, 2023 08:00 - 29 minutes - 24.2 MBEileen Claugus grew up in the Sacramento, California area, where she remains somewhat of a local running celebrity to this day. Claugus remembers competing in her first race in a cross-country meet in 1967. She went on to set a national high school mile record of four minutes and 40 seconds, which stood for 10 years. She continued to compete, placing second at the World Cross Country Championships in 1971 and serving as an alternate to the U.S. Olympic team in the 1,500 meters in 1972, at ag...
24 | Marie Mulder
March 30, 2023 08:00 - 42 minutes - 29.7 MBMarie Mulder’s running career was brief but triumphant—she started in the sport just before her 14th birthday, when a local coach recruited her. The next year, at the 1965 National AAU Track & Field Championships, she won both the 800 meters and the 1,500 meters—the first time women were allowed to compete there at a distance beyond the half-mile. That earned her a spot in the U.S.-Russia meet in Kiev later that year, where days after her 15th birthday, she ran 2:07.3 in the 800 meters to pl...
23 | Chris McKenzie
March 16, 2023 08:00 - 53 minutes - 44.8 MBChris McKenzie was born in London in 1931, and was diagnosed at a young age with a serious bone infection that required her to wear a brace. While she was recovering, she had the good fortune to meet a famed runner named Anne Stone, who helped her recover, encouraged her to get into running and, eventually, became her coach. Her talent was quickly evident over a range of distances, including the 880 meters and longer cross country courses. In 1953, she met American Olympian Gordon Mckenzie, ...
22 | Grace Butcher
February 16, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 60.6 MBAs a child in Chardon, Ohio, Butcher realized she was fast at a young age. In ninth grade, she learned about track and field as a sport that was only available to men—and as a sophomore, she sought to change that, asking the school's track coach to start a girls' team. When he refused, her mother contacted Stella Walsh, the 1932 Olympic champion in the 100 meters and then-coach of the Polish Falcons, a boys and girls track club in Cleveland, Ohio. A couple of days each week, Butcher’s mother...
21 | Randi Bromka Young
February 02, 2023 09:00 - 36 minutes - 33.3 MBRandi Bromka Young can pinpoint the moment her running career started: She woke up one day when she was 31 and ran as far as she could from her house. She only traveled a mile that day, but from there, the transition to running ultramarathons was “rather quick,” in Young’s words. Her first race was the famed Boulder Bolder 10K and then some short summer races and a short triathlon. By 1987, she had run six marathons; in July of that year, Young ran her first ultramarathon, the Vail Valley 50...
20 | Sally Edwards
January 19, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 56.6 MBSally “Sal” Edwards is no stranger to being at the front of endurance races and the forefront of revolutions in running retail and exercise physiology. She didn’t pick up running until after college, but eventually became a Nike-sponsored runner and competed in a number of marathons, including the inaugural US Olympic Marathon Trials in 1984. Her marathons were interspersed with ultramarathons—In 1980 she won the Western States Endurance Run—both of which were ultimately supplanted by triath...
19 | Cheryl Treworgy
January 05, 2023 12:33 - 1 hour - 85.1 MBIn December 1971, Cheryl Bridges (now Cheryl Treworgy) became the first woman in the world to break 2:50 in the marathon. Treworgy decided to try running in 1964, when she was in high school; though she had no girls' teams to train with, she soon began competing and excelling. Eventually, she ran on five world cross-country teams and came in fourth at the 1969 international cross-country championships. A little more than three decades after Treworgy’s world-record marathon, one of her daught...
18 | Women's Running Stories:
December 15, 2022 09:00 - 44 minutes - 46.3 MBTo finish out the year, we’re bringing you something a little bit different in this feed: an episode of Women’s Running Stories, a podcast hosted by Cherie Louise Turner that features documentary-style stories about women’s running journeys. If you’ve been listening to our oral histories of women’s running pioneers, you’re going to love the way Cherie masterfully conducts and compiles these interviews, and we’d encourage you to subscribe to her podcast too, if you don’t already. This episod...
17 | Karen Troianello
December 01, 2022 09:00 - 1 hour - 55.5 MBIn 1979, standout 800-meter runner Karen Troianello (Blair) joined a group of women student-athletes and coaches in a lawsuit against Washington State University (WSU), suing over inadequate funding and support for women’s athletics under Washington’s Equal Rights Amendment. By the luck of the alphabet, she ended up being named the plaintiff. Blair vs. Washington State University went to the state Supreme Court, which—in 1987—ruled in favor of Blair, changing college athletics in the state o...
16 | Michele Cuke
November 17, 2022 09:00 - 1 hour - 46.2 MBMichele Cuke's first racing success came at age ten when she won a 600-meter race sponsored by her church. She went on to become one of California’s top high school 800-meter and cross-country runners, then competed collegiately at UCLA. She ran all four years, culminating in setting the 10,000-meter school record and becoming the 1983 NCAA 1500-meter champion. Ultimately, Cuke completed eleven marathons in less than three hours, including eight in less than 2 hours and 45 minutes. To this d...
15 | Patricia Barrett
November 03, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 68 MB1972 was a banner year for American women in athletics, and Patricia Barrett, a high schooler from New Jersey, was at the center of many of the milestones. In January that year, she won her first marathon, the inaugural Jersey Shore Marathon. Then, she was one of the eight women who ran the Boston Marathon that year, the first year female runners could officially enter and receive numbers. That fall, she returned to Central Park for the New York City Marathon, joining Kuscsik and five other ...
14 | Shawanna White
October 20, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 55.3 MBShawanna White is a semi-professional runner and physical education teacher in Columbia, South Carolina. Nearly every weekend, you can find her on the starting line, racing distances from the mile to the marathon. She’s run more marathons under three hours than any other American-born Black female runner—her current total is 16—and her personal best of 2:45:19 places her eighth on the list of fastest African American marathoners, a list she was instrumental in creating. In 2022, she was indu...
13 | Billee Pat Connolly
October 06, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 80.2 MBWhen 16-year-old Billee Pat Connolly stepped up to the start line of the 800-meter race at the 1960 U.S. women’s Olympic Track and Field Trials, she had no idea she would become a part of history in what has now become known as "The Abilene 800," the event that opened the door for women to run longer distances. Connolly went on to become a three-time Olympian, a renowned track and field coach, who coached Evelyn Ashford and Allyson Felix to their own Olympic berths.
12 | Julie A. Brown
September 15, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 52.7 MBJulie A. Brown grew up in Billings, Montana, as one of five, and began her running career when she followed in her sister’s footsteps and joined the high school cross-country team. Before long, she was paving her own path. Eventually, she made many US national teams during and after college. She excelled in an impressive range of events—from the 4x400 to the marathon to cross country. Notably, she was the first U.S. woman to win the IAAF Cross Country championships in 1975, ran a 2:26:26 mar...
11 | Michele Tiff-Hill
September 01, 2022 10:00 - 53 minutes - 48.2 MBMichele Tiff-Hill grew up in Cleveland, into a very athletic family, but didn’t get into running herself until her late 20s. Instead, she focused on her music career in high school, college, and beyond. She took up running in an effort to simply be more active with all the hours she spent sitting at the piano bench every day. Though she initially did her running in secret, she quickly grew more motivated to improve her race times. She ran her first race, a 10K, in about 52 minutes; eventuall...
10 | Ann Gaffigan
August 18, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 63 MBAt the 2004 Olympic Trials, Ann Gaffigan won the 3,000-meter steeplechase and set an American record. But the women’s steeplechase wasn’t yet an Olympic event, so it was only an exhibition event at the trials, and Gaffigan’s win didn’t earn her a ticket to the Olympics. It was the best day of her life, Gaffigan says, and she was proud of what she’d accomplished—but competing at the Olympics had been her childhood dream, and she didn’t get to go, despite the fact that men had been competing i...
9 | Madeline Manning Mims
July 21, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour - 67.3 MBWhile attending Tennessee State University, Mims became the first African-American woman to compete in the 800 meters and the first American to win Olympic gold at the 1968 Games in Mexico City. From 1967 to 1980, she won 10 national indoor and outdoor titles and set several American records. Her fastest 800-meter time, 1:57.9 in 1976, was a long-standing American record in the event. Today, being an “overcomer” informs Mims's work as an motivational speaker and chaplain for the U.S. Olympic...
8 | Robin Campbell Bennett
June 16, 2022 10:00 - 1 hour - 77.6 MBBetween 1972 and 1976, Robin Campbell Bennett competed in events across the United States, winning and medaling at many of them. In 1974, she set the American Record in both the 600 meter and 1000 meter events. She also competed at the USA vs China Friendship Competition in Shanghai, China in 1975. Then, in 1976 Robin participated as an Olympic Trials Qualifier in the 400-, 800-, and 1500-meter events in Eugene, Oregon. She was also a sponsored athlete of the Puma Track Club, perhaps paving ...
7 | Charlotte Lettis Richardson
May 19, 2022 11:24 - 1 hour - 61.7 MBCharlotte Lettis Richardson begin running in 1971 and competed at the national and international level in distances from the 800 meters to 30K. She started a women’s running club in 1972, won the 1975 L’eggs Mini Marathon, and made the Olympic Trials in the 1500 meters in 1976. She’s also a storyteller who wrote and directed the 2005 documentary “Run Like a Girl.” Richardson currently lives in Sisters, Oregon, where she coaches at Caldera High School. She’s approaching her 50th year in coach...
6 | Jacqueline Hansen
April 14, 2022 11:31 - 1 hour - 61.5 MBJacqueline Hansen is a two-time world record holder in the marathon; she was the first woman to break the sub-2:40 mark with her 2:38.19 world record time. She is the 1973 Boston Marathon winner, a national collegiate champion in the mile, and a Masters World Champion in the 1500m and 5,000m distances. As President of the International Runners Committee, she spearheaded a movement to usher the women’s distance events (marathon, 5,000m & 10,000m) into the Olympic Games.
5 | Freddi Carlip
February 10, 2022 14:00 - 38 minutes - 35.5 MB“I look back now and I don’t think of myself as a trailblazer. We were setting the standard for other women and encouraging them.” Freddi Carlip started casually running in 1978 as an outlet from her daily life as a stay-at-home mom to two small children. Little did she know that the healthy activity would soon become her life’s work. In addition to serving as a founding member of the Starting Line 1928 oral history project, Carlip has served multiple terms as the President of the Road R...
4 | Alisa Harvey
December 02, 2021 13:48 - 1 hour - 69.3 MB“I wasn’t known for anything else but my running. That’s what I kind of latched onto. I didn’t have many extras, like summer camps or lots of material goods, but I did have my running and my legs and a TV set and goals.” Alisa Harvey’s impressive running career spans decades and distances. The first time she qualified for the U.S. Track and Field Olympic Trials was in 1988, in the 1500 meters, when she was still a student at the University of Tennessee. The last time she did so was in the ...
3 | Judy Shapiro-Ikenberry
November 04, 2021 13:00 - 1 hour - 83.2 MB“They [the men] didn't like it when we beat them, but they were very accepting and very encouraging. It was always the officials that were the problem, you know, and it's just two different classes of people. And they get their kicks from enforcing the rules. We got our kicks from being in shape.” Judy Shapiro-Ikenberry ran in her first track meet at age 12, and her first Olympic Trials, in the 800 meters, at age 17. She continued to train and took on longer distances while working as a te...
2 | Marilyn Bevans
September 23, 2021 21:03 - 56 minutes - 51.7 MB"All I can do you know that let people know that Black folks can run—we have been running. I've had calls, people asking me, Marilyn, how can we get more Black distance runners in high school? If you never see any black distance runners, it's hard ... we still have to keep pushing, and you need people that know how to coach distance." Marilyn Bevans has no regrets. She did what she loved to do and did it on her own terms. In her own quiet way, she became a trailblazer for African-American ...
1 | Bjorg Austrheim-Smith
September 23, 2021 13:00 - 1 hour - 62.2 MB“I was doing it for my own survival, because I was a stay-at-home mom. And I felt that I needed to do something for me, because I felt like my brain was dying. I needed something for me. It just turned out that way, I just didn't know. I was pleased when people would come out and maybe I encouraged somebody else to do that.” Bjorg Austrheim-Smith, multiple Western States winner, will tell you upfront that her story does not fit the typical narrative. She was a stay-at-home mom who was look...
Starting Line 1928: Trailer
September 23, 2021 12:55 - 2 minutes - 6.49 MBThe first modern Olympics were held in 1896. Women runners, though? They weren’t called to the starting line until 1928. After made-up reports of women collapsing after the 800 meters, track and field’s governing body eliminated the event after just one try—a change that lasted until 1960. It wasn’t the first, and certainly not the last time the story of women’s running was twisted, and athletes’ voices lost. Running fans will know some of the stories of women pioneers in the sport: Bo...