09/02/2025
If you know the early history of the Boston marathon, then you know the first woman to complete it had to sneak onto the course.
The culture has such a false perspective about women and running long distances.
It’s a story that feels both astonishing and deeply relatable. In 1959, a woman named Arlene Pieper Stine did something extraordinary, almost on a whim. She was a 29-year-old mother living in Colorado, and she’d taken up running to get in shape. Not for glory, not to break barriers, but for herself. That simple, personal motivation led her to the starting line of what was then, and still is now, one of the most grueling races imaginable: the Pikes Peak Marathon.
The course goes from the streets of Manitou Springs straight up to the 14,115-foot summit of Pikes Peak, and then all the way back down. The air gets thin, the terrain is brutal, and it’s a test of sheer will for anyone who attempts it. And there was Arlene, running alongside the men, with no real precedent for what she was about to do. There was no fanfare, no special category for her. She was just a woman, running.
And she finished. She crossed that finish line, her daughter waiting for her, having accomplished this incredible physical feat. Then, she simply went home. She went back to her life, to raising her family, to her work as a physical therapist. The race became a wonderful memory, a story to tell now and then about that time she ran up a mountain. But what she never knew, for over fifty years, was that she had quietly, and without any intention, made history. She was the first woman ever officially recorded as finishing a marathon in the United States.
Can you even imagine? To hold a piece of history within you, a secret even to yourself, for half a century? It’s a thought that’s both thrilling and humbling. She wasn’t running for a place in the record books; she was running for the pure, personal challenge of it. There’s a profound beauty in that. Her achievement wasn’t about beating others; it was about answering a call to see what her own body and spirit could do.
It wasn’t until 2009 that a historian, digging through old race results, discovered the truth and tracked her down. After fifty years, Arlene learned that her personal triumph was also a landmark moment for women in sports.
