Over the past few months I have throughly enjoying following fellow runners taking part in races such as the Lakeland 50/100, UTMB, CCC, T184, LL130 and best of all I could do this from the comfort of my own home by tracking them on my laptop – how times have changed!
When I lived in London in the 80’s it wasn’t normal to see people running round the streets and certainly very few women seemed t be running. Did you know that before the 80’s there was no long distance races in the Olympics for women and in Ancient Greece if women were even caught spectating at the Olympic Games they could have been executed! Thankfully we have come a long way since then.
The first all-women’s marathon was held in October 1973, but it wasn’t until the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles that women finally won the right to compete in an Olympic Marathon. The Marathon was won by Joan Benoit in a time of 2:24:52
http://www.olympic.org/videos/joan-benoit-wins-the-first-women-s-marathon-gold
When I began running in 1999 I knew nothing of half marathons or marathons and absolutely nothing at all about Ultras, I’m not sure I even knew anyone that ran and as far as I was concerned everyone ran inside on a treadmill not outside. Unless you knew someone who was interested in the sport or read an article in the newspaper it was incredibly difficult to find any information. Computers weren’t common place in most people’s homes, together with mobile phones they were considered luxuries and very expensive. HWMBO first phone was massive, the battery pack was the size of a briefcase.
HWMBO invested in a computer but the children weren’t allowed anywhere near it and even I was told to be “careful”!! (cheek!!) Now my two eldest grandchildren 7 & 3 know exactly how to use an iPad and computer (the youngest with supervision!)
The World Wide Web became available to the masses in 1993 and the only way to get onto the internet was via a dial up modem – it took forever and meant that you weren’t able to use the house phone. The only way to save your information was on the “floppy” disc (I’m sure they could have thought of a better name!!)
I first heard of the Marathon des Sables via an article in the Telegraph magazine. After getting the children into bed I “dialled” into the network and put in the website address that I found at the bottom of the article. I remember having to fill in a basic form on the computer and waited for the information to be sent through the in the post, it took forever to arrive – now everything is done on-line very little is posted!
There were very few forums and even the ones that existed no women seemed to put anything up, so trying to find out information on kit, female matters was virtually impossible. There were NO training plans available so we had to do our own which funnily enough is very similar to what people do today, so nice to know we didn’t get it completely wrong!
The year I did the MdS, 2001, there were 11 other women from the UK who also entered and I believe now there are over 46 female entries from the UK each year – fantastic.
Now its unusual for people NOT to have a computer, laptop, iPad or all three and on the go we all have iPhones or something similar – nowadays we are all permentaly linked to information via social media, google or emails, there is SO much information out there it can be quite muddling at times and difficult to decipher what is right or wrong – everyone has an opinion one way or another.
I think its quite sad that today we are in constant contact with one another – apparently some people even talk or text while sitting on the loo! When I was racing in the Sahara for the first time I told HWMBO that I wouldn’t be using the race computers and there was no way of us speaking to one another until he picked me up from the airport. For 10 days we had no contact which made me realise how much I missed him. Now there is no time to miss someone as we can ring/text, Whatsapp,Skype or FaceTime each other 24/7.
On the positive side looking for your next race is easy, a quick “google” and a plethora of events pop up on your screen – the only difficult decision is deciding which event you should enter!
Forums are full of information from both women and men and it’s fantastic to see that we now have a lot more women in the world of Ultra running showing the men how tough we actually are. -When I started running it was frowned upon by some people that I left my children to go racing. I would often have comments from men saying “how can your husband allow you to go away for 10 days and share a tent with men” – as if I had time or the inclination to think about you know what – typical male comment at the time! Thankfully it’s now considered quite “normal”.
I love the fact there are so many amazing races we can choose from in some beautiful locations and if I can’t find the information I’m looking for I can pop a question on FB and responses come from all directions – often people I have never met. The world has become a much smaller place.
Don’t get me wrong, I love technology, it enables me to follow friends in races all over the world or for others to follow me when I’m doing one of my big events, opening up the world of Ultra running to family and friends who want to follow their loved ones, but equally I love it when I go to places and the technology doesn’t work – heaven!
Happy Training
