4 Apr 2023 | Women's ultrarunning history |
Women’s participation in road running in the UK has grown considerably in the past 15 years and it is not uncommon for women to make up over 40% of finishers in road races. Yet in ultrarunning, women’s participation is much lower, perhaps around 30%, but this varies...
10 Dec 2022 | Women's marathon history |
The official programme for the inaugural London Marathon in 1981 described Leslie Watson as “the Queen of the Roads”. Her prolific racing led to her becoming the public face of the women’s marathon in the UK. Watson had run over 40 marathons in six years. She had...
2 Jun 2022 | General running history |
The marathon boom really got going in the early 1980s in the UK. The 1980s were a boom time for running magazines too, fed by the surge in popular interest in road running. New titles sprang up that catered for a new type of runner, the non-elite distance runner or...
11 Apr 2022 | Women's marathon history |
The 1970s were an important decade in the history of women’s marathon running in the UK and internationally. For most of the twentieth century, women were prohibited from running long distance races and it was only in the 1970s that countries began to lift the...
21 May 2021 | Women's endurance running history, Women's marathon history |
March is Women’s History Month in the UK, USA and Australia. This year, I decided to mark Women’s History Month by sharing a story from women’s running history on social media each day. This turned out to be a much more time-consuming task than I had...
