Run, Switzer, Run: The Women who Broke the Marathon Taboo (Classic)
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tim is running the London Marathon on the 26th of April. To give him a week off to finish training, we're playing this running-themed classic from the archives. If you would like to donate to Teenage Cancer Trust, Tim's fundraising page is at tinyurl.com/HarfordMarathon - any support is very much appreciated.
Until the 1960s, it was deemed too "dangerous" for women athletes to run distances longer than 200m - and a marathon would kill them, or leave them unable to have children. Rubbish, of course. But when Kathrine Switzer signed up for the 1967 Boston Marathon, it wasn't the distance that bothered her - it was the enraged race director trying to assault her.
Thanks to pioneers like Kathrine, women have made huge strides in long distance running - and are now challenging the times of men in the very races they were banned from for so very long.
See the show notes at timharford.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:10.7 | Pushkin. |
| 0:13.9 | Today you're about to hear a rerun of one of our classic episodes about some truly heroic figures in women's distance running. |
| 0:22.9 | I loved writing this episode. It's a quirky one and a favourite, but lately it's taken on a new |
| 0:29.2 | meaning for me. That's because in a few days, on the 26th of April, I'm about to take on |
| 0:35.5 | by far the biggest running challenge of my life, the London |
| 0:39.8 | marathon. Training for it has been hard, really hard, and this story has made me think differently |
| 0:47.6 | about endurance, courage, and what it means to keep going. I'm also running for a cause that means a great deal to me. |
| 0:58.3 | I'm raising money for the Teenage Cancer Trust, in memory of my cousin who died last year from |
| 1:04.9 | cancer. She was 20. So if you'd like to support me and, more importantly, support the Teenage Cancer Trust, |
| 1:14.6 | I'd be enormously grateful. |
| 1:17.0 | We'll put a link in the show notes. |
| 1:18.9 | It's tinyurl.com slash Harford Marathon. |
| 1:25.1 | But in any case, thank you for listening. And I hope you enjoy this classic episode |
| 1:30.3 | of cautionary tales, Run, Switzerland, run. Jasmine Paris had sworn she'd never attempt the spine |
| 1:42.6 | race. She was a champion long-distance runner, but the spine race was something else. |
| 1:48.8 | 268 miles up the Pennine Way, the spine of England, carrying your bedding and all your food |
| 1:55.3 | and anything else you might need on your back. |
| 1:57.9 | Jasmine Paris had never raced over such a long distance. |
| 2:05.6 | The spine race is held in January when it's dark for 16 hours a day. It's cold enough that the route is often covered with snow, but not quite cold enough to stay dry. |
| 2:11.6 | Everything, everything gets wet. |
... |
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