When I first started running, I was so embarrassed I’d walk when cars passed me. I’d pretend I was looking at the flowers! – Joan Benoit Samuelson, First Woman Olympic Marathon Champion
I’ll be honest, I thought I was listening to an audiobook narrated by a bunch of people I know. Don’t listen to podcasts, can’t stand people yakking. But many of these folks are longtime and long-ago friends; I love hearing the sound of their voices. Like a reunion.
Wrote a lot about Joanie back in the day.
She was big news and always good to me. If I liked her any more than I do, she would need a restraining order.
Benoit is my favorite runner. This woman is so tough, I imagine she could crack walnuts with her eyelids. She won the 1984 USA Olympic marathon Trials – that’s over twenty-six miles, folks – just seventeen days after knee surgery.
Such a joy for life.
And when she tells you what it’s like to win the first Gold Medal for the women’s marathon – first woman ever to wear the crown – in her own words, you can still hear the steel in her voice.
Amazon has this to say about the ‘audiobook.’
Miles to Go
Peter McDonnell (Author), Carol Monda (Narrator), Audible Originals (Publisher)
The first Olympic women’s marathon and the battle for the right to run
On August 5, 1984, millions of people around the world watched the first ever women’s Olympic marathon live on ABC. Until this day, women had never been allowed to run even a mile at the Games, much less a marathon. When Joan Benoit Samuelson broke away from the lead pack at mile 3, it was a shocker. No runner had ever attacked so early and won an Olympic marathon.
But on August 5th, there were a lot of firsts. The history of women’s distance running is a largely untold story of triumph over discrimination. For much of the 20th century, America’s cinder tracks and open roads became unlikely battlegrounds for a handful of pioneering women runners who broke the gender barrier in races, showing that women can be athletes too, and helped to advance women’s civil rights.
But the Olympics were a last barrier for female distance runners, making the first women’s marathon at the Games a major milestone. In fact, US marathons had been open to women for only a decade. And before that, women in the US were prohibited from competing in runs of more than a few miles.
Before that, they were hardly even allowed on the track. This is the story of Joan Benoit Samuelson’s incredible journey to the Olympics and of the other women who paved the way and competed against her, whose passion for running also became a race for equality – and change – that continues today.
Joan has run over 160,000 miles in her life… and counting.
Miles to Go.*MILES TO GO is being released in honor of Women’s History Month, and on the 50th Anniversary of the 1972 passage of Title IX of the Civil Rights Act.
Nota bene: Keep listening after the credits.
Part of the joy of this ‘audiobook’ is getting the inside story of history directly from the pioneers who made it.
Girls were not allowed to run. Period. Not ladylike. You could lose a uterus. Dark dark days. No joke.
You kids in your Lycra arm sleeves and super space soles don’t know of the Before Times.
Cliff Notes from Amazon, because Miles To Go has a killer book report vibe. And why the hell isn’t Ken Burns all over this?!
Episode 1: Last Shall Come First. Joan and the world’s best marathoners meet in LA to compete in the first ever women’s Olympic marathon. Men have been competing in marathons since the modern games were created in 1896, so why did it take until 1984 for women to get the chance?
Episode 2: Cross the Line. Joan runs in the lead pack as commentators speculate whether her surgically repaired knee will hold up. One of the people watching is Julia Chase Brand, who became the first woman – when Joan was just four years old – to break the gender barrier in distance running in 1961 by crashing the famous men’s only Manchester Road Race and making headlines.
Episode 3 : Run For it. To everyone’s surprise, Joan launches an early attack. She liked to run her own race, just the way she trained at her home in Maine, whatever the weather. But when Joan was a girl, women didn’t run marathons – at least not until a few pioneer women runners like Bobbi Gibb, Sara Mae Berman, Katherine Switzer, and Nina Kuscsik began crashing the Boston Marathon, years before the 1972 passage of Title IX.
Episode 4: Breakthrough. Joan gaps the field as her friend, former Olympic marathoner and then TV commentator Bill Rodgers watches in awe from his ABC news vehicle at the front of the race. Bill first met Joan when she ran the 1979 Boston Marathon and discovered the distance that she was made to run. Before then, Joan was one of the first women to be sponsored by the fledgling shoe company Nike, whose first employee, a running coach, saw her win a high school race by a country mile.
Episode 5: A Golden Opportunity. As Joan enters the middle of the Olympic marathon, her lead has grown, but danger lies ahead: heat, humidity, and a hill to an empty freeway where the course turns East toward the LA Coliseum. Will her knee hold up despite the surgery that nearly cost her a bid at the Olympic Trials? And will Norwegian Grete Waitz – widely considered the best marathoner in the world at the time – come from behind and take gold?
Episode 6: A Beacon. As the world watches, Joan enters the final stretch of LA streets – the LA Coliseum in the distance, filled to capacity. But the pack behind Joan has splintered and the chase is on. As in life, the twists in the marathon mean that victory is never sure. The journey is the real story, and for Joan, her Olympic competitors, and the pioneer women runners, it required grit, courage, and stamina to go the distance.
And the point of the story, she didn’t get there alone.
Many many women – and more than a couple of men – labored for years to right the wrong of girls forbidden to fly.
Some took a chance.
And flew they did.
