Gordon Bakoulis has built an impressive running résumé that includes: a five-time qualifier for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, finalist in the 1992 U.S. Olympic 10,000-meter Trials, and an age-group champion at the 2001 New York City Marathon, where she ran 2:41 at age 40. Her marathon personal best stands at 2:33:01; her half-marathon best at 1:11:34. "I can't imagine running not being in my life," she says. Fortunately, she has never had to. Running has shaped her life for more than five decades.

"I was just in the right place at the right time" is how Lynn Blackstone likes to color her participation in one of the pivotal events in the history of women's running—"The Six Who Sat" protest at the start of the third New York City Marathon in 1972. While this may seem a vast understatement, what cannot go unnoticed is her decades-long love of running. The sport threaded its way through her next decade, as she gave birth to two sons and continued to run through both pregnancies. Today, at age 85, Lynn still runs and is an active member of the Central Park Track Club, which she and Dave founded with 10 members in 1972.

For those who follow masters running, Jeannie Rice's name often invokes awe and admiration. At age 77, Rice has more than 40 Masters titles in the U.S. At age 70, she set her first age group world record at the 2018 Chicago Marathon with a time of 3:27:50, which she lowered a year later, at the 2019 Berlin Marathon, with a time of 3:24:48. She also holds age-group world records in the 1500 meters, 5000 meters, and 10,000 meters on the track. In this episode of Starting Line 1928, we talked about her own running routine, her role models, and her goals to run a 3:30 marathon after turning 78. Rice is also planning to compete at the 2026 World Masters Athletics Stadia Championships in South Korea.

Jessica Dragičević Cassleman grew up in Chile with British and Yugoslav roots. She found her way into elite athletics through community sports clubs, eventually competing and coaching at a high level. A political upheaval in Chile and a serendipitous phone call brought her to the United States and the University of Illinois, where she became a pioneering women's track and field coach in the early years after Title IX. She built competitive programs at Illinois and Washington State University, fighting for equity in resources and respect for women athletes, and developing a coaching philosophy centered on training the whole person. Eventually, she stepped away from coaching, choosing family and a different kind of leadership. She became an academic administrator, serving as assistant dean in both the Honors College and the Carson College of Business at WSU, shaping international programs, teaching and mentoring students, and carrying the same principles into the classroom.

Ultra-running legend Helen Klein turned 100 on November 27, 2022. A force of nature, she believes anything is possible if it is within your grasp. Few people have grasped as many accolades as she has. Over the course of her remarkable career, Klein amassed 75 national and world records, completed 90 marathons and 143 ultramarathons; and at age 66, was one of the first athletes to complete the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning which consists of four of the most demanding 100-mile trail races in the United States. At 72, she completed a 145-mile race in the Sahara Desert in Morocco. Just weeks later, she finished the punishing 370-mile Echo-Challenge in Utah. She also holds the marathon world record for women aged 80 and over in 4:31:32, which she set at the 2002 California International Marathon. Five years later she shattered the 85 and over record at the same race.

If Tish Hamilton is being honest, she doesn't consider herself a pioneer in women's running. She looks at titans of the sport like Kathrine Switzer and activists like Alison Mariella Desir—"They're legit," Hamilton says. But Hamilton's work in the sport—as the first female executive editor of Runner's World magazine—is nothing to sneeze at. Hamilton calls the marriage of her two passions—running and journalism—a privilege. She helped usher in the second running boom, one driven largely by women, one step behind the helm of the go-to magazine for runners. The mission was to broaden the coverage of the sport—from elites to weekend warriors doing incredible work—and with that, bring in a more varied audience, including women.

Anne Audain is a three-time Olympian and former professional runner for New Zealand. She had success as a very young athlete, qualifying for the 1972 Munich Olympics at age 16, though she wasn't able to compete until the 1976 Montreal Olympics, when she was 20. However, the road to discovering her talent wasn't without its challenges. Anne, who was adopted as a baby, was born with a bone deformity in both feet, which she wasn't able to correct with surgery until she was 13 years old. After more than a year of rehab and recovery, Anne hit the ground running, literally. Despite having competed in her first Olympic Games in 1976, she only went pro in 1981, and went on to have a storied career, breaking several course records on the US road running circuit and winning multiple Commonwealth Games medals. She retired from competition in 1990 and is now based in Evansville, Indiana.

Eileen Waters Connolly was a trailblazer in American long-distance running, part of the first generation of women to compete in the sport. In 1972, she made history by setting a world record in a 50-mile race on a track in Santa Monica, finishing in 7:05:31. Even more impressive, she ran negative splits—completing the second half 23 minutes faster than the first. A year later, she returned and broke her own record, cutting 10 minutes off her time. She died in 2016 at 71 from adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC), a rare form of cancer. As she aged, she never lost her sense of humor or self-effacing nature. She was quoted as saying, "When you get
old, you just show up and most likely you'll win your age group."