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A new edition of a sports icon’s memoir, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of Kathrine Switzer’s historic running of the Boston Marathon as the first woman to run.

In 1967, Kathrine Switzer was the first woman to officially run what was then the all-male Boston Marathon, infuriating one of the event’s directors who attempted to violently eject her. In one of the most iconic sports moments, Switzer escaped and finished the race. She made history-and is poised to do it again on the fiftieth anniversary of that initial race, when she will run the 2017 Boston Marathon at age 70. Now a spokesperson for Reebok, Switzer is also the founder of 261 Fearless, a foundation dedicated to creating opportunities for women on all fronts, as this groundbreaking sports hero has done throughout her life.

“Kathrine Switzer is the Susan B. Anthony of women’s marathoning.”-Joan Benoit Samuelson, first Olympic gold medalist in the women’s marathon

Run Like A Girl is about the impact that participating in sports has on women, how the confidence and strength that it helps to build makes us stronger and better prepared for life's many challenges. 

In this inspiring book, Mina Samuels uses the personal stories of women and girls of all ages and backgrounds, as well as her own, to take a broad look at the power sports have to help us overcome obstacles in all arenas of life. Run Like A Girl includes the stories of a US-ranked amateur triathlete who's raising an autistic son, a thirteen-year-old girl who falls in love with cross-country running, a woman who runs her first marathon at age sixty, an investment banker who quit her job to become a yoga teacher and adopt a daughter on her own, a young mother with scoliosis who cycled her way back to health and became a jewelry designer along the way, and countless other women, including Kathrine Switzer, Rebecca Rusch, and Molly Barker, who have been changed by their experiences with sports. 

Run Like A Girl argues that physical strength lends itself to psychological strength, and that for many women, participating in sports translates into leading a happier, more fulfilling life.

“From foot-binding to corsets, patriarchal societies have found ways to immobilize women, but now, marathoners and Olympians are proving that women can run like the wind!” —GLORIA STEINEM

"A look behind the curtain that all women who love running and sport should read.” —KARA GOUCHER, Olympic runner and New York Times-bestselling author of The Longest Race

More than a century ago, a woman ran in the very first modern Olympic marathon. She just did it without permission. Award-winning journalist Maggie Mertens uncovers the story of how women broke into competitive running and how they are getting faster and fiercer every day—and changing our understanding of what is possible as they go.

Despite women proving their abilities on the track time and again, men in the medical establishment, media, and athletic associations have fought to keep women (or at least white women) fragile—and sometimes literally tried to push them out of the race (see Kathrine Switzer, Boston Marathon, 1967). Yet before there were running shoes for women, they ran barefoot or in nursing shoes. They ran without sports bras, which weren’t invented until 1977, or disguised as men. They faced down doctors who put them on bed rest and newspaper reports that said women collapsed if they ran a mere eight hundred meters, just two laps around the track. Still today, women face relentless attention to their bodies: Is she too strong, too masculine? Is she even really a woman?

Mertens transports us from that first boundary-breaking marathon in Greece, 1896, to the earliest “official” women’s races of the twentieth century to today’s most intense ultramarathons, in which women are setting all-out records, even against men. For readers of Good and Mad, Born to Run, and Fly Girls, Better Faster Farther takes us inside the lives and the victories of the women who have redefined society’s image of strength and power.

"An essential read to normalize women's existence, excellence, and humanity within the sport of running.” —ALISON MARIELLA DÉSIR