Running Her Own Race

On April 19, 1967, twenty-year-old Kathrine Switzer pinned bib number 261 to her sweatshirt and lined up at the start of the Boston Marathon. No rule explicitly barred women, but none had ever entered with an official number. She had registered as "K.V. Switzer," and in the chaos of the starting line, no one noticed.

Around mile four, the press truck rolled past. Race official Jock Semple spotted her, sprinted from the vehicle, grabbed her shoulder, and screamed, "Get out of my race!" He clawed at her bib number, trying to rip it away. The photograph of that moment — Semple's furious lunge, Switzer's startled face — would become one of the most iconic images in sports history. Her boyfriend, Tom Miller, a burly hammer thrower running beside her, threw a shoulder block that sent Semple sprawling. Switzer kept running. Four hours and twenty minutes later, she crossed the finish line.

Paul wrote to the Galatians, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." The early church struggled with the same impulse Jock Semple had — the urge to rip the number off someone who didn't look like they belonged. But the Gospel keeps handing out bib numbers to everyone the religious gatekeepers would disqualify. Courage is not the absence of hands grabbing at your shoulder. Courage is finishing the race anyway, knowing that in Christ, you were always meant to run.