A Crooked Trail or Two

Arlene Pieper Stine in 2019 (Photo: Parker Seibold/The Gazette)

One of the things I love most about being a trail runner is how welcoming the trail-running community is to everyone, regardless of sex, age, fitness level, speed, or any other characteristic. Trail runners on the whole are kind people.

I learned something recently that reinforced this:

It turns out, the first woman to finish a sanctioned marathon in the USA wasn’t Roberta Gibb at the 1966 Boston Marathon, but rather Arlene Pieper Stine at the 1959 Pikes Peak Marathon.

At the time, this milestone wasn’t recognized as anything remarkable. Women had never been explicitly barred from the race, and some had been running the Pikes Peak Ascent (a half marathon) since 1936. Ms. Stine ran the Ascent in 1958, then set her sights on a full marathon finish. She owned a gym in Colorado Springs, and figured running the marathon might be a nice way to promote her business. She ran laps at the local college’s track to train. As she told WBUR in a 2017 interview:

"The three children sat in the middle of the track with their toys, and I ran a lot there," Arlene says. "And once a week on Sundays, I went up to Barr Camp and back to get used to the altitude and all that."

Pikes Peak Marathon is one of the more challenging marathons out there; it starts at over 6,300 feet (which is enough to induce elevation sickness in some people) and climbs 7,800+ vertical feet to Pikes Peak’s summit at 14,115 feet. Then, racers must endure the descent… and contrary to popular expressions - “it’s all downhill from here!” - running downhill can be more taxing on the body than climbing up.

But Ms. Stine was in good shape, and accustomed to working out at altitude. She drew confidence from her familiarity with the terrain. As she shared with WBUR:

*Arlene Pieper Stine on a training day atop Pike’s Peak in the 1950s, in the same attire she’d wear on her milestone marathon day.*

"Men would come there from other states not knowing that they wouldn't be able to breathe too good."

On race day, her husband and 9-year-old daughter, Kathy, kept her company for the ascent. And every time Arlene, her husband and her daughter would pass one of the men who were panting on the trail, Arlene would say, “Isn't this a beautiful day for a race?” and blow right past them.

It was an entertaining way to keep her spirits up on the long climb.

In an era before manufacturers were designing much clothing for women’s athletic performance, Arlene wore a white blouse, cropped shorts and tennis shoes she’d bought at the dime store.

When she reached the top, she waved over her shoulder, turned around, and made her way down the tough descent — this time on her own, as her husband and daughter stopped at the summit.

“At the finish line, I felt pretty good," she told WBUR, "I'm sure I was a little tired, but I wasn't completely exhausted. I lost all my toenails a few days later. Every single toenail fell off.”

And she never ran another marathon.

In the years since, female runners have often run Pike’s Peak in white, in tribute to Ms. Stine.