Latest Womenrunners Podcast Episodes
42 | Sue Parks
Starting Line 1928 - January 25, 2024 11:00 - 46 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsSue 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 l...
41 | Patti Catalano Dillon
Starting Line 1928 - December 21, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsIn 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 Ru...
40 | Janet Romayko
Starting Line 1928 - November 30, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsJanet 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 M...
39 | Cheryl Toussaint
Starting Line 1928 - November 16, 2023 11:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsCheryl 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 ea...
38 | Francie Larrieu Smith
Starting Line 1928 - October 26, 2023 08:00 - 55 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsFrancie 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 ...
37 | Krystine Beneke
Starting Line 1928 - October 12, 2023 08:00 - 59 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsKrystine 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,...
36 | PattiSue Plumer (part 2)
Starting Line 1928 - October 05, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsThis 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, p...
35 | Janet Cain
Starting Line 1928 - September 14, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsJanet 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 livi...
34 | Lou Peyton
Starting Line 1928 - August 24, 2023 08:00 - 49 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsLou 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 als...
33 | Julia Chase-Brand
Starting Line 1928 - August 10, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsOn 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 spri...
32 | Ingrid Walters
Starting Line 1928 - July 20, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsRunning 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 lifeguard...
31 | Toshiko D'Elia
Starting Line 1928 - July 06, 2023 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsToshiko 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 ...
30 | Sika Henry
Starting Line 1928 - June 22, 2023 08:00 - 48 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsSika 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 ...
29 | PattiSue Plumer (part 1)
Starting Line 1928 - June 08, 2023 08:00 - 2 hours ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsPattiSue 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 ...
28 | Amy Begley
Starting Line 1928 - May 25, 2023 08:00 - 46 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsAmy 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 f...
27 | Erika Kemp
Starting Line 1928 - May 11, 2023 08:00 - 32 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsErika 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 ...
26 | Mary Wittenberg
Starting Line 1928 - April 27, 2023 11:35 - 41 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsMary 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 forc...
25 | Eileen Claugus
Starting Line 1928 - April 13, 2023 08:00 - 29 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsEileen 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, whi...
24 | Marie Mulder
Starting Line 1928 - March 30, 2023 08:00 - 42 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsMarie 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...
23 | Chris McKenzie
Starting Line 1928 - March 16, 2023 08:00 - 53 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsChris 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,...
22 | Grace Butcher
Starting Line 1928 - February 16, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsAs 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 mothe...
21 | Randi Bromka Young
Starting Line 1928 - February 02, 2023 09:00 - 36 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsRandi 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 ...
20 | Sally Edwards
Starting Line 1928 - January 19, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsSally “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 t...
19 | Cheryl Treworgy
Starting Line 1928 - January 05, 2023 12:33 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsIn 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 ra...
18 | Women's Running Stories:
Starting Line 1928 - December 15, 2022 09:00 - 44 minutes ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsTo 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 wom...
17 | Karen Troianello
Starting Line 1928 - December 01, 2022 09:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsIn 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 a...
16 | Michele Cuke
Starting Line 1928 - November 17, 2022 09:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsMichele 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-...
15 | Patricia Barrett
Starting Line 1928 - November 03, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratings1972 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 Bost...
14 | Shawanna White
Starting Line 1928 - October 20, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsShawanna 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 fema...
13 | Billee Pat Connolly
Starting Line 1928 - October 06, 2022 08:00 - 1 hour ★★★★★ - 3 ratingsWhen 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 ru...
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