LP Kiatoukaysy told his story to producer Caro Rolando for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

There were a couple of people that had mentioned that a plane had hit the first tower. So I looked up, and of course I could see a lot of flames. The impact of the plane on that first tower, and just mail and pieces of paper and debris falling. But even before I could begin to process all that, that’s when that second plane hit the South Tower. That’s really when I was running for my life.

On trail, I go by Lil’ Buddha. Right now, I am on the Appalachian Trail. I grew up in Hutchinson, Kansas.

I’m an American adventurer. I am also a long distance thru-hiker, and that is really what drives me, motivates me, and also inspires me.

I’m Hmong-American. The Hmong are a Southeast Asian group that came over to the United States in the seventies, as a product of the Vietnam War. My family was part of that.

We have a saying in our language that translates to, “We are of the mountains.” And Hmong, in Cantonese, actually translates to, “free people.” And so our ability to remain autonomous, to have our own lives, and to live the way that we want is very, very important culturally.

Coming to Kansas and having that barren kind of landscape, and just the whole culture shock of coming from Southeast Asia to the Midwest, was pretty eye-opening, I think, for my family. We really found refuge by visiting Colorado. Hmong people love to hunt, we love to fish, and all of those things. So my parents were able to save enough for each summer and we would go to Colorado and go on vacation. That’s really where the love of the outdoors started for me as a young person.

Growing up in the Midwest in Kansas, I was a pretty odd child. I was really interested in counterculture literature.I got really interested in Jack Kerouac. That kind of changed my whole worldview, and really just let me know what else might be out there beyond the confines of my small Midwest town.

I graduated college and immediately got out of there. I moved to New York, because that was something that my literary influences had done. So I found myself shortly after college in Manhattan. I was there in the mid-nineties, working down in the financial center. I was a marketing manager at American Express.

I would take the subway down to the World Trade Center. That morning of September 11 was a beautiful autumn morning. The sun was shining, just a typical New York day. I just happened to be on the train when the first tower was hit.

The train came to an abrupt stop and everyone kind of jolted. Everyone’s in work clothes, so there’s no being nimble and keeping yourself up. People were pretty much falling on top of each other, being pushed up against each other.

We came into the station, and the first thing I noticed was smoke, there was just a lot of smoke. The transit authority came down and told us all to evacuate. We exited the train and I walked up the stairs.

I made the mistake of walking directly up onto that plaza. The first thing I noticed was all this debris, a lot of office equipment, mail, pieces of paper just flying around. You start asking people, what’s going on?

There were a couple of people that had mentioned that a plane had hit the first tower. So I looked up, and of course I could see a lot of flames. The impact of the plane on that first tower, and just mail and pieces of paper and debris falling. But even before I could begin to process all that, that’s when that second plane hit the South Tower. That’s really when I was running for my life.

This is kind of weird. I think for me, it’s really difficult to talk about this. But I think it’s important.

We’re all just kind of looking up at the towers. And then you start hearing screams. That day it was all about sirens and people yelling and screaming and crying. This was a different type of scream though. The people that were up in those towers, they were trapped. They were making life decisions, to end their life by jumping out the windows. It was just too much for me. So I turned and headed north, and walked home.

Probably about three months after September 11th, I can remember this to this day, sitting in my office, I made a conscious decision that I’m gonna leave my job, gonna leave New York. I’m gonna get rid of all of my possessions and just put everything into a backpack and start walking.

I had hiked the Pacific Crest Trail before I started working, and the very first thru hike I ever did was on the John Muir Trail.

I knew I wanted to have a life beyond what I was doing. I wanted to kind of take back my own agency and my own sense of self because that had been lost. The trail was always there. It was always something that I remember being my best and most authentic self on.

One thing that you will encounter on trail, no doubt, is trail magic. Trail magic is essentially just when someone does something kind and unexpected. That could be as simple as giving you a ride to town to resupply, or sometimes people come out and will actually meet you and make food, and have this whole setup. It’s pretty amazing. That is something that I think is just really unique to thru hiking and long distance travel. These magical, spontaneous moments of human kindness, where we’re all just out there enjoying company. Enjoying times shared together, in usually an incredible and beautiful surrounding.

Often, I find myself much more giving, much more forgiving. I find myself wanting to be helpful because that’s what’s been given to me, and so it’s kind of like this feedback loop.

I think people think that thru hiking and backpacking and exploring are about getting away from people. And again, actually the irony of thru hiking is it brings you back to community and to connection.

One mantra I always practice is gratitude, because I think when you’re in the moment, you can get really down, like, Why is everything wrong? What is going on? Why are my shoes not right? My backpack broke, I can’t get a ride. And so in those moments, and it’s oftentimes when I’m walking on a road, I find myself really not grateful. So I purposefully will practice a gratitude mantra, that’s just something as simple as saying something like, I allow myself to expand my gratitude. I’m gonna enjoy this day. Thank you for this pain. Thank you for the weight that’s in my backpack. It’s just something to kind of get myself out of that mood. And it works.

Once you start letting go of things that you think are supposed to be the right thing and allowing yourself to just be in that moment, that’s really when the magic happens.

LP Kiatoukaysy, or Lil’ Buddha, is a Hmong-American adventurer, speaker, and outdoor advocate. He’s currently hiking the Pangea Traverse, a route that includes three continents and crosses 18 countries. To follow along with his adventures, visit his Instagram @.

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Siri Lindley told her story to producer Caro Rolando for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

The gun goes off, and I am just being dunked under the water, kicked in the face, yelled and screamed at. Everybody was so angry that this girl that doesn’t know how to swim is in the fastest lane.

I am in Santa Ynez, California. I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut.

I am a high performance coach, a keynote speaker for Tony Robbins around the world for his Unleashed Power Within and Date with Destiny events. I also speak around the country for Kepler Speakers. I’m an author and I am co-founder of two nonprofits rescuing horses from slaughter.

When I was 23 years old, I had just come out to my dad as gay. He was horrified and basically cut me out of his life, and it was devastating. He was my best friend. He was my greatest source of love.

I had graduated a couple years earlier from Brown University. I was a field hockey, ice hockey, and lacrosse player. I was just devastated, and I felt so desperate to prove to myself that even though I was gay, that I could achieve something that I think is special. That I can make a difference in the world, that I could be loved. And most importantly, find a love and worthiness from within, somehow, some way. And that’s when I discovered triathlon.

Watching this race, I was just in awe of all the different types of people that were out there, different ages, sizes, abilities.  I was so inspired, and it became so clear that this was going to be the vehicle through which I could find myself and find a respect for myself, a love for myself. But the only problem was, I didn’t know how to swim.

My friend had decided that she would try and help me. When she took me to the pool for the first time, she said, “Oh, Siri, I had no idea. You really didn’t know how to swim.” So she taught me the basics, and I went out to Colorado a couple months later.

I was living in Massachusetts at the time. I went out to Colorado where my mom lived, and decided to do my first race. It was the sprint distance, and I had no idea. At the registration line they’re saying, “What’s your hundred meter time?” And I’m thinking, A hundred? I’ve never swam a hundred.

I have no idea, and I’m so nervous. She listed 1:15, 1:20, 1:25. I said 1:15, 1:15. So I get in the 1:15 per hundred lane, and the gun goes off.

The gun goes off, and I am just being dunked under the water, kicked in the face, yelled and screamed at. Everybody was so angry that this girl that doesn’t know how to swim is in the fastest lane.

So the good news was, after a hundred meters, I had the whole lane to myself.

I got out on the bike, and it felt like the Swiss Alps. It was so hard, and I’m grinding away. And I got off the bike, and I was so excited to run that I forgot to take my helmet off. And I’m running, and I’m doing what I did on the field. I’d sprint for 25 meters as hard as I could, and then I’d stop and bend over and gag and try and get my breath back. I ran the whole 5K like that.

I finished the race in dead last. But I had never felt so alive in my entire life.

That night, however, as I lay in bed, I remembered. The looks on everyone’s faces. The kids laughing at me. “Oh, she’s running with her helmet on. What an idiot.” The people that were yelling at me in the swim lane. And I started to cry. I started seeing everything that I was oblivious to when I was racing. And I went into my mom’s bedroom and she looked at me and she said, “Honey, you did it. I’m so proud of you. Now you can go do something that you’re good at.”

And I cried even harder. I said, “No, you don’t get it. I’m gonna be the best in the world one day in this sport.”

I decided in that moment that I had to set a goal, something like this, to set myself up for at least going somewhere in my life. My dad was telling me with his rejection that because I’m gay, I’m unlovable, I’ll never be worth anything. And I wasn’t willing to live that story.

I could have said, OK, I just came in dead last, I don’t know how to swim. I’ve gone to an Ivy League school. I can’t throw that away to go do a sport that I suck at. I could have told myself the story that no matter how much you love this sport, Siri, you can’t do it. It’s not for you. Can’t swim, too old. All the reasons. But instead, I told myself a different story. Look, I’ve got a great work ethic. I know how to commit. I know how to dig deep. I’m willing to fail. I’m willing to learn. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’m passionate. There’s a deep emotional reason why I have to do this for me.

And in telling myself that story, then it became about, OK future me the best in the world. What would she do? What decisions would she make? What would she know? She would know that if she just showed up, leaned in every single day, that that progress ultimately one day will lead to her at least becoming pretty good. So I had to condition that story so that I could become that person that one day could be a great triathlete.

I failed so many times. I humiliated myself so many times. But I had redefined success as progress. If I make any progress, any form of progress, physical, mental, emotional, I’m being successful.

I went all in. And thank God I did.

Exactly eight years after setting this goal, I became the world champion. The number one triathlete in the world.

One of my mantras that I use almost every day is: Every day in every way, I’m getting stronger and stronger. Every day, in every way, I’m getting stronger and stronger. Every day in every way, I’m getting stronger and stronger.

The number one thing is to stay out of your head and just come from your heart like you’ve chosen to do this for a reason. Just be present and take it all in.

In 2000, Siri Lindley won her first World Cup race. The following year, she became the number one triathlete in the world, and won six consecutive World Cup races. She is now a high performance coach, author, and the co-founder of two nonprofits. You can learn more about her on Instagram @.

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Perry Cohen told his story to producer Caro Rolando for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

We were on a hot, dusty trail at that point, and I’m just looking around thinking there’s nothing to stop a fire from getting us here. There’s no river, there’s no body of water, the wind isn’t turning. So if we don’t keep going, it could catch us.

I am in southern Vermont in a town called Halifax, and I grew up about 40 minutes east of here in Keene, New Hampshire.

I am the founder and executive director of the Venture Out Project. We lead outdoor adventure trips—backpacking, skiing, paddling—for queer and trans folks. We also run inclusion workshops for folks in the outdoor industry.

There was a trip I took in 2017 that really had a tremendous impact on me. Growing up on the East Coast, I’d done most of my adventures in the East, and a friend of mine who I worked with actually invited me to come backpacking in the Three Sisters Wilderness just outside of Bend, Oregon. I was thrilled.

We started our backpacking trip, and it was gorgeous and beautiful. The first night I remember we were camping by this gorgeous lake, and I woke up probably two hours after I fell asleep feeling like I was choking. I spent the whole night in and out of sleep, choking.

I woke up and saw my friend Travis, and said, “Did you have a hard time sleeping last night?” He was like, “Yeah, I don’t know what was going on.” We thought it was windy and dusty.

Then maybe an hour later we realized, Oh, it’s smoke.

Coming from the East coast, I hadn’t really been used to forest fires. I obviously knew they existed, but I hadn’t actually experienced one. We checked our phones. We still had service. There was no messaging, nothing in the Forest Service. So we’re like, OK, we’re fine to keep going. So we kept backpacking, and we came into this forest that was completely black.

The further we went in, the more depressing it started to be, and the more depressed we started to feel. But we’re like, Everything we read online, we had the most up to date beta on this, didn’t say anything about a fire. We touched the trees, and they were still warm.

But at this point, we didn’t see any smoke, so we kept going. We’re reading the trail description, looking for water and looking for these campsites that are supposed to be there, and they’re not. We’re still in this black forest where there’s no green at all. There’s not even any little sprouts growing out of the dead or anything.

We were still in this state of disbelief of like, Well, we just missed something. This can’t possibly be that fresh of a fire despite touching the tree and it still being hot. We were, I think, in a little bit of shell shock, of not expecting the land to look like it looked. It was bizarre, like it’s too tragic to accept. So our brains are making up all these excuses for why the obvious and logical conclusion to what we’re experiencing must not be right.

We spent that night, and again, we were just gagging and couldn’t sleep, and we were getting more and more depressed. This whole adventure had been about seeing these wildflowers, and late summer in the Three Sisters Wilderness, and the crystal clear waters, and we’re seeing none of it. So we got up the next morning, and we looked at each other and we’re like, We don’t know where this fire is. We don’t have any service. We haven’t seen a forest ranger. But we probably should get out of here.

We were on a hot, dusty trail at that point, and I’m just looking around thinking there’s nothing to stop a fire from getting us here. There’s no river, there’s no body of water, the wind isn’t turning. So if we don’t keep going, it could catch us.

You’re walking for your life. You just have to keep walking.

We walked so far that day that I quit being able to stop, because my feet hurt so bad when we would start up that I had to just not rest because I couldn’t. I was afraid that if I stopped one more time, I wouldn’t ever start hiking again. I think it was a 32-mile day that last day.

When we walked out, probably the last two miles were right at the edge of the Three Sisters Wilderness, and we had a view of Mount Jefferson. It was covered in wildflowers, and it was kind of wild to have this juxtaposition of this very black scorched earth next to these beautiful wild flowers and lush grass, and thinking about how, if given the chance, the earth really can and does heal itself, but we have to let it.

I’d had feelings of elation from being outside. You summit something, or you catch a wave, and you feel incredible and free and small in a really good way. But this was very different. This was like, Oh shit, like the world is burning.

I think if you live in a city you’ve never been outside, this all sounds very esoteric, and Yeah, yeah, yeah, so what? It doesn’t impact me. And then when you’re actually in it, and you see it being destroyed right in front of you, it’s profound.

That’s one of the things I think about a lot at Venture Out, is we don’t explicitly talk about turning people into environmentalists, or asking them to go out and do anything in the world. But we do highlight the magic that is the natural world, and the beauty of these places that we take people to. And my hope is that by experiencing these places and seeing how magical the world is, people will want to take some action.

Perry Cohen is the founder of the Venture Out Project, Base Camp at Beaver Falls, and Transhealth Northampton. He and his partner, Amy, and their four children make their home in the hills and trails of Western Massachusetts. You can learn more about Perry’s work by visiting .

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Moses Amira told his story to producer Caro Rolando for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I learned of his death at the airport in Dubai. I had a two-hour layover, and another six hours of flying to come after that. I’m with my son, who I was carrying on my chest. That evening immediately got really tough, because I had this little bundle of joy who was making me smile, and I have these emotions inside me that are making me cry.

My name is Moses Amira, some people have called me Mkubwa, which means “the big one” in Swahili slang. I am currently in Manila, Philippines, with my wife and our one-year-old son. I’m Kenyan, and my wife is German.

One of my biggest passions in life is cycling. It has brought me a lot of joy and friendship and connection. I got into the cycling community in Kenya, thinking that I was giving back to the community and being there for whoever needed help, in just small ways that I could manage. At some point while doing this, my cycling friend, Caleb, was cycling on a road in Nairobi, Kenya, called Thika Road. He rammed into a stationary bus parked in the middle of the road on the highway. Without reflection, without anything. It was the dark of night and he was going fast. He died.

It became a big deal in the cycling community. So we organized to go cycle the same road and let our voices be heard, that we are not happy with the situation of the roads in Kenya and the way things worked there.

One person came up next to me, and told me he had just driven 500 kilometers to come and be with us, and he was going to drive back immediately after. The empathy really touched me. I asked this person who they were. And said he’s called Suleiman Kangangi.

The name rang the bell. I knew he was a cyclist who has been representing the country in many races abroad. The empathy to have traveled just to attend this bike ride and go back got me. I told him, “Hey man, as long as you are in Nairobi, my house is your house from today, henceforth.” So I was thinking, Oh, OK, I’m helping this young man here. He started coming to my house, and he became regular until he joined the household. Every week he would be living with me at some point. We would go out cycling together. Slowly, I started noticing, Oh, this guy is not the same as other people that I have met.

He had a fire in him. You could see it was a very mature fire, like somebody who has really found himself. So I started taking notes of the way he talked, the things he was doing, and his story. His story was extremely touching.

He didn’t know who his father was; he had a single parent upbringing. His mother had a terminal illness. He just fought for everything.

He started training to do a thousand-kilometer bike ride from Nairobi to Mombasa and back to Nairobi. Most people were trying to do Nairobi to Mombasa at the time, and you were like royalty if you were able to do that one in a day. So he decided he wanted to do Nairobi to Mombasa and back to Nairobi in three days.

I somehow started looking up to him. You are really sure you are helping someone, but then you take time to be with this person, and slowly you realize the person is actually the one helping you. It’s not like they’re doing anything that is giving you any financial gain, it’s just an enrichment from within. And you start finding peace. You also become better, because you get motivated to be better at something. He became my best friend.

I don’t understand how he managed to live a life so full. Even in the one year that I was with him and I thought I was empowering him, he empowered and enriched me.

I was on the way to Manila from Brussels, I was traveling with my wife and my son. At the airport, my phone would not stop. I was receiving a ton of messages, and people trying to call or whatever to ask me what was wrong. I have a close friend from the cycling community. When I saw his call, I was like, OK, there’s a problem. He said, “Moses, it’s not good.” Then he told me that unfortunately, Sule has passed on.

He was in a cycling race in the US. It was a gravel race, one of the biggest in the world. All of us will deal with grief at some point, because nobody came into this world alone. But, it’s never something you can be ready for, I feel. As much as we all know it’s going to happen.

As an African man, it’s seen as a weakness to cry. You’re scolded as a boy, and you grow up with the fear of seeing your own tears or tasting any salt from upwards of your mouth. You have to allow yourself to cry, to let it out.

We organized a sendoff in Nairobi, where the cyclists could get to say goodbye to an icon. So many people came through; the cycling community in Kenya was amazing.

We went to Nyayo Stadium in a procession, the team that he was cycling with when he passed on at the front. We ended up with around a hundred of us. The cyclists put their bicycles up on the sides of the road, and they were singing and crying and whistling, and it was so beautiful. I was looking at it and I was thinking, I’m very sure Sule must be happy, at least, where he is.

Moses Amira is a cyclist, computer scientist, and videographer. He continues to honor Sule’s life and legacy by advocating for better biking conditions in Kenya and around the world. You can watch videos about Sule and much more on .

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Brian Reynolds told his story to producer Caro Rolando for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was laying on the ground. My pack was beside me. I was thinking I’d probably climb out of the canyon without that pack on my back and just leave it there as a total loss. I didn’t know how I was gonna get to the top, but I knew that I was gonna get to the top even if it required crawling.

I grew up outside of Boston, and currently I live in New Jersey. When I was four, I contracted a rare disease called meningococcemia, which is a bacterial-based version of meningitis. And even now in 2023, it’s still a very deadly disease with a very high fatality rate. But back in the early ‘90s, it was an under ten percent survival rate. So when I say I’m lucky to have only lost two legs below the knee, I truly mean I’m lucky.

The prosthetic technology that I had growing up that was available to me was just not conducive to long bursts of hiking, running, walking, or anything in between. I had a lot of chronic sores on my legs and honestly, with all of that, I had no drive to do any sort of endurance sport and to push myself in that realm.

It was before social media was a thing. I didn’t know any other para-athletes. I didn’t know any other amputees in general, athletes or not. And I didn’t even know that those things were possible. I just kind of figured I’m an amputee, I’m just gonna get through life, but it’s not gonna be too exciting in the sporting realm for me.

I grew up trying to hide my legs, hide who I was. I was afraid of what everybody would think of my legs if I wore shorts. So I wore pants for the first almost 25 years of my life. Didn’t matter if it was 110 degrees out, I was there in jeans. It wasn’t until after college, I was at the gym over the summer and there was no AC in the gym, and it was probably 110 or 120 degrees in that gym. And I basically just said, Screw it. I can’t do this anymore. And I put on shorts for the first time since I was four, since before I was in the hospital. And you know what? Nobody looked at me any differently. Nobody cared. That was the “aha” moment. I’ve been hiding myself and putting myself away so that I’m not seen. I put shorts on for that first day, and I basically don’t put pants on anymore.

Between me putting on shorts and getting into endurance activities, it was no more than six months. I happened to stumble across a flyer for Team in Training that was like, “Go hike the Grand Canyon.” I was like, I like crazy things and I can’t walk a mile if you put a million dollars at the end of it, but this sounds like fun. So I went to the Team in Training meeting, and I was absolutely convinced that I needed to do it after the first meeting. I signed up right there.

I feel like that this was the first time I truly came out of my shell in just wanting to push my limits. I thought I couldn’t do it, so therefore I was determined to do it. Signing up for, I think it was a 16 or 17 mile hike across the canyon, just seemed like a really good way to see what I could or couldn’t do.

Team in Training is a really awesome organization. They have coaches that help you train every single week. We had a local team of, I don’t know, 10 or 15 people that were all training for the same goal. We were varying abilities of people who, like me, had never hiked or done anything endurance, straight through people who had hiked all over the world. Being able to hike with them on a weekly basis and having a coach that would give us exercises was definitely a really important part of getting me healthy, fit, and ready to go.

For the hike in the Grand Canyon, I believe we went down Kaibab Trail, across the Tonto Plateau, and then back up Bright Angel. Right before we started climbing out of the canyon, I wasn’t feeling good. I think it dawned on me how much of a newbie I was to the sport. For that hike, I was the only person using prosthetics. I was absolutely wrecked by the heat. My legs are encased in silicone, so I sweat drastically more than most people. The guide that they had for us that day made me sit down for probably at least 30 minutes, and nearly force-fed me electrolytes, despite me telling him I didn’t need them.

Well, he was right. I definitely needed electrolytes. Because 30 minutes later, I felt much better and powered out pretty fast for somebody who 30-to-60 minutes beforehand could barely stand up. Climbing out of the canyon, standing on the edge and seeing what I just did, made me think about how many other things I could do.

I started running on just everyday walking legs, which are terrible for running in. It’d be the same as if you went for a run in a ski boot: zero ankle mobility, lots of chafing, and heavy. That’s how I started running one minute a day for a week, and then two minutes a day for a week, and so on.

As new as I was to hiking when I ran the Grand Canyon, I may have even been newer to running when I decided a marathon was a good idea. From 2014 to now, I couldn’t even remotely tell you how many races I’ve done. Some years it’s dozens, some years it’s less. I think I’ve run like 12 marathons now.

It’s so much easier when you break it down instead of saying Oh, I have to go run a marathon. I have to go out for my 15-mile. It’s much easier to say, I’m gonna go out for a minute today, or five minutes, or whatever you’re comfortable at, wherever your level is. Just start moving forward. Just five minutes or less. It makes a difference.

If you start taking teeny steps towards your goal, you can summit a mountain. So I think my advice is to just start.

Brian Reynolds has broken several world running records for double leg below the knee amputees. He works for Athletic Brewing, and is also a professional runner for Brooks Shoes, among other companies. You can find him on Instagram @brianreynoldsrunner.

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Kathrine Switzer told her story to producer Caro Rolando for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

There was a kerfuffle behind me and I turned, and at the last minute I saw the most ferocious face I’ve ever seen in my life, And he screamed in my face, “Get the hell out of my race, and give me those numbers!”

I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area.

I started running when I was 12 years old. I had told my parents that I wanted to be a high school cheerleader the next year. And my father said, “You don’t want to do that. You want to have people cheer for you. The game is not on the sidelines, the game’s on the field.” He said you should run a mile a day, and make the field hockey team in your high school. I ran a mile a day all that summer, and he was right. By the time autumn came around, I was one of the best players on the team. Not because I had any skills, but because nobody could catch me and I never got tired. That’s when I fell in love with running.

When I got to Syracuse University, there were no sports whatsoever for women. I was really gutsy because I had been playing sports running; I was now running up to three miles a day. I went and asked the men’s track coach if I could run on the men’s cross country team. And he was really shocked. He said, “No, it’s against NCAA rules. But if you wanted to come and work out with the team, we wouldn’t mind.”

I knew he was lying because when I closed his office door, I heard him burst out laughing to his colleagues and say, “I guess I got rid of that one.”

So the pressure was on for me to show up. I showed up the next day. He was surprised, and the team was wonderful. All of those guys came running over to me and saying, “This is great. We’ve never had a girl out here before.” One guy in particular, his name was Arnie Briggs. He was 50, I was 19. So, this guy was ancient. He was a kind of volunteer manager. He was a really fine distance runner, and in fact still held the New York State record in the marathon. He’d run the Boston Marathon 15 times. And he took me under his wing and ran with me every day.

One night I told him I wanted to run the Boston Marathon, and he said a woman can’t possibly do it. And I said, “What are you talking about?” I told him that a woman by the name of Roberta Gibb had actually jumped out of the bushes and run the Boston Marathon the year before, and he absolutely refused to believe it. He said “No, you’d have to show me in practice. I don’t believe any woman can do it.” So, finally I said, “OK, we’re on.”

Arnie Briggs said, “You’ve got to sign up for the Boston Marathon if you’re going to run this.” I signed the entry form. I paid my $2. But I signed my name with my initials, K.V. Switzer. That’s probably why the Boston officials accepted the entry, because they thought it was from a guy and not from a woman.

I was so excited. The Boston Marathon was in April, and I was going to wear the sexiest, cute shorts and top. They didn’t have running clothes for women then, so I had dyed a pair of old shorts, and I had a maroon top to match. I looked really good. I was very proud of being a woman. I wasn’t trying to disguise myself in the least, so I dutifully put on my earrings and my lipstick and my mascara, and my boyfriend looked over at me because he came with us to Boston. And he said, “You’re wearing lipstick!” And I said, “Of course I’m wearing lipstick. I always wear lipstick.” He said, “Take it off. They’re going to see that you’re a girl.” And I said, “I want them to know I’m a girl. I’m not hiding here.” And he said, “Oh, it might be a problem.” I said, “There won’t be a problem.”

The gun went off. Down the street we went, and it was a problem because the press truck came by us and they were going crazy. They saw that I was in the race wearing bibs. They started saying, “Oh, there’s a girl in the race.” And they started looking at their program to read my number, and they began taking pictures like crazy. We thought it was kind of cute; there was Arnie and my boyfriend and the guy from the cross country team and me, and we just waved at the press truck and we thought it was our moment to say hi to our moms on the nightly news, you know?

Then there was a kerfuffle behind me and I turned, and at the last minute I saw the most ferocious face I’ve ever seen in my life, right in front of my face. This man grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me back. He swiped at my front to try to rip my numbers off, and I jumped back and I said, “Hey, hey!” And he said, “Give me those numbers, give me those numbers!” My coach suddenly started to beat on him and said, “Leave her alone! She’s OK, she’s OK, I’ve trained her, leave her alone!” And he said, “You stay out of this!”

He smacked my coach, and came back and I turned to run, and he grabbed me by the sweatshirt. He was pulling me back and trying to get the number off the back of my shirt. And then my boyfriend charged into the race director who was attacking me, a beautiful shoulder charge, and sent him flying out of the race. My coach Arnie said, “Run like hell.” And down the street we went.

I just felt a combination of profound embarrassment, profound fear, and also profound ambivalence. I didn’t know if I should step off the course or continue running. Then when I was alongside the press truck, they followed me, and all the officials and the photographers and the journalists got incredibly aggressive. “What are you trying to prove? Why are you here? Are you a suffragette? Are you a crusader? What are you doing? You don’t belong here. When are you going to quit?”

Then, it became like a mantra. “When are you going to quit? When are you going to quit?” And I thought, they expect me to quit. They can’t believe a woman is here seriously. And I said, “I’m not going to quit.”

I turned to Arnie and I said, “Arnie, I gotta tell you something. I’ve gotten you in a lot of trouble now, and you can do what you wanna do. But I’m gonna finish this race and I’m gonna finish this race on my hands and knees if I have to.”

I often say destiny is not some angel coming down and tapping you on the head at the perfect time. Destiny is finishing the job. Just put one foot in front of the other and get it done, and that’s when destiny happens.

The decision to finish the race was what I call my 261 moment. The moment that bib number I was wearing, 261, came to life. Who would ever have imagined that moment would have changed millions and millions of womens’ lives, and changed my attitude and my perspective on everything, and given me a vision that I couldn’t possibly have imagined. Making the decision to finish changed my whole life.

Since becoming the first woman to run the Boston Marathon as an officially registered competitor in 1967, Kathrine Switzer has run more than 40 marathons. In 1974, she won the New York City Marathon. Kathrine is also the co-founder of , a global nonprofit organization that offers education and running opportunities for women around the world. Learn more at .

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