A Runner’s World survey conducted last year found that many American women runners face street harassment and elite women runners like Kara Goucher and trailblazers like Katherine Switzer are are no exception! Fifty years ago men tried to pull Switzer off the course of the Boston Marathon when they saw she was female!! Other male runners placed themselves around her to protect her and she was able to finish. Today, she ran it again at age 70. She talks about that epic 1967 run here and in her book Marathon Woman.

As some one who ran her first marathon at age 14, I am grateful to her and other women like her who blazed the way for me and my peers. It was a real honor to meet her a few years ago! May one day we all be able to run harassment-free.