A bunch of CRCers gathered over pizza and salad (and pistachio macaroons!) tonight to watch Run For Your Life, a documentary about Fred Lebow, the founder of the New York Marathon. I highly recommend it!
Run For Your Life tells the inspirational story of Lebow's efforts to start the NYC marathon, including lots of archival footage and interviews (e.g., Grete Waitz, Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, and the founder of Runner's World).
Having always taken for granted that the New York City Marathon would have lots of runners, spectators, and support from the city itself, I was amazed to see how far Lebow took it from its inception as a Central Park race with fewer spectators than runners. His creative efforts such as getting Playboy Bunnies to run in an all-women's Crazylegs Mini Marathon both amaze and amuse.
Watching footage of those Bunnies made me even more grateful for the gender equality that I'd also taken for granted. One of the interviewees stated that women were not expected to run more than a mile at a time in the '70s...what would they have said to us wearing old-man tights and finishing entire marathons?
3 comments:
women are precious, I guess especially in the 70s. didn't the boston marathon not have women until only the 80s?
Not sure...the first women's Olympic marathon was '84 so Boston was probably around then too.
1972, although Switzer ran in 1967.
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