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Can you hear me?
Yes!
Okay, yes I've heard about Irish welcomes and I've already had one marriage proposal.
Okay!
That's the name of the proposal, that was the name of the proposal.
That was the name of the proposal.
Yes sir!
That was the name of the proposal.
I think it's finally the last day.
That was the very first question and I just take a little bit of the back of the book.
I mean very well done, very well done.
Oh, it's just lovely to be here, it's so wonderful, I'm glad I have a few Irish teens floating around in it.
It's just the most friendly, wonderful place, I'm all ready to settle down here and say it's lovely to be here.
I did a fair bit of research, much loved it, and one thing that I completely missed,
because I have heard your story about its attraction and artistry sculpture.
Yeah, I've done a lot of things and right now I'm doing sculpture and painting.
A lot of athletes and portrait bronzes, I think bronzes.
And I'm working on a 25 foot mural and I love art.
Yeah, but is there a break down that there's an artist who fights for a lot of things that she does?
Yeah, well, I see the beauty and I believe that when I do my artwork it's the same as running.
And I would say I ran a lot of stuff and I love, well I ran a lot because it was love of life and the sense of beauty.
And I love to run in the woods.
And yes, even as a little kid I'd run, top speed across the grass.
And I just feel the whole universe is some kind of loving thing.
And when I ran I really felt that energy and that sense of love and soul.
I always had that feeling of being surrounded by and infused with this sense of the universal love.
It's kind of everywhere.
Because I've always been amazed at existence and it's going to let me again.
Because this is really why I run and why I do the art.
Because I've always been so amazed that everything exists.
And I studied science a lot.
I studied science.
My father was a scientist.
And I grew up studying about biology and everything.
And I was just fascinated by the fact that there's living systems and there's people and there's trees
and there's the earth and the solar system and all these molecules.
And the more I learned about it the more amazed I was.
And so it just filled me with a sense of excitement and love.
And that's why I do the art.
Because I see beauty everywhere.
I see when I sculpt things in the space I feel like I'm in love with it.
I feel their spirit.
And I'm seeing what I'm painting or how I'm painting my nature.
So that's the enthusiasm and love for life.
Yeah, well I saw the Boston Rad mine in 1964.
I didn't quite get that.
And at that time hardly anyone ran for a part of any of my memories.
And for a woman, for all women to run in public was way outside the social norm.
I mean it's improper for a woman to run in public.
I mean they just couldn't bat them.
And so when I was running through the woods with my dogs and my parents but it was nuts.
And they kept saying, you know, how do you run my husband if you're running in the woods with your dogs?
They were really upset about this.
And so I saw the marathon and I wasn't thinking it was men or women.
I just saw these people running.
And I fell in love with it.
I said, wow, I want to be part of this.
I want to, it spoke to me.
Something deep about the human spirit, this endurance and this ability to run.
And the sort of integrity it takes to do that.
And so I just started training not knowing if I could do it.
My heart would give out.
I was just pressing into the unknown.
I had no trainer.
I ran in nurses shoes.
They didn't have any women's running shoes.
No women ran.
So I was in love with the earth.
And growing up in America, I learned the old Westwood story.
And I was in love with the environment.
And I thought, well, I'm going to go across the country.
And I was a camper.
I love camping out.
So at night I would camp out.
I'd sleep.
I didn't have a tent.
I'd walk out.
And I'd fall asleep looking at the stars.
And during the day, I would run wherever I was in a different place.
And I'd talk to people in the truck stops.
And I'd just start cross-sectioning this crazy country.
And I went across the country.
And the further west I got, the stronger I was getting.
Because I was running further and further.
I ran and I crossed the Mississippi.
And I would cross the Great Plains.
And I'd never seen so much space.
It's huge plains up over the Rocky Mountains.
And I was running up over the mountains and down.
And I remember sleeping out one night in Malata.
And I grew up in a coastal town.
And when I got out there, and there were more stars than I had ever seen.
I couldn't believe I'm going to be stars.
I'm going to re-bottled.
There are more stars than dark places.
I just kind of tore my breath away.
It's kind of on a spiritual quest.
Because I was so amazed at this existence.
And here it was.
This whole Irish thing.
And so I felt this is what I had come to see.
This grandeur and the harmony in this thing.
And so I kept on running all the way down.
I jumped into the Pacific.
And that was the bulk of my training.
She actually jumped into this.
I actually jumped into the Pacific.
Yay!
I jumped into huge waves.
And I had a mountain of coffee with me.
So how was that some emotional journey for you?
When you were probably in the version of that,
like yourself during the journey?
Yeah, I was getting stronger and wilder.
And closer and closer to nature.
And so by the time I finished that,
I'd probably be ready to run.
Yeah, you've done the training.
You've done a couple of thousand miles.
We're running for 26,000.
Like, Boston was just the rest of Japan
in the middle of the 20th century when you were a child.
But you just had to find more employment
around thought muscle.
Well, for centuries,
I mean, women were thought to be inferior.
And they weren't allowed to go to medical school
or be in a profession.
It was very close.
And as an adolescent woman growing up,
I was fuming at this.
And I didn't want to be in the Stephanie Rocks.
And I was seeing what it did look to my mother,
who was an intelligent, beautiful woman.
And she was just all she was allowed to do
was sweep and clean.
And I knew I wanted to be married.
I wanted to have children.
And I wanted that.
But that's not all I wanted.
You know, I had a body.
You know, I had a mind.
And I wanted to be free to be who I am.
And that's the whole thing about being individual.
Everybody is a unique individual.
And to be free to follow what it is that you love,
I feel like everyone came here to give some more.
I always wanted to give something to make the world better somehow.
And to come in and see things that are wrong.
And to see the world laboring under false beliefs.
And false beliefs keep us captive.
And the truth really does set us free.
And so here is this false belief about women.
And I thought, well, if I include this false belief,
I'm just going to throw in the question
of other false beliefs.
And I wanted to end the stupid war between the sexes
which was leading nowhere.
And I mean, I love men.
I didn't see why we couldn't be whole people.
And man could be whole people in the person in the feelings
and being with his kids and the women that have a career
and run and be strong and fast and smart.
Why do we have to divide this up
and be fractionary people and play these roles
and fit into these stereotypes?
I mean, we're all laboring into these stereotypes.
And group typologies and people killing each other
right this very minute because they have a stereotype.
Well, I mean, it is of what each group is.
And they fear the other group and they hate the other group
and they kill each other.
And I don't have time.
I heard you said that women could be wrong.
And why don't they have?
So you decided that if I wanted to be a false American
I would break down that barrier.
Open up running by more women also.
It's going to throw in a question all the other false beliefs
have been used essentially to trick women down.
And I've always fought against false beliefs.
Instead, I look into the world now and I go, oh my god.
It's so full of false beliefs.
They're keeping everybody from living healthy, happy, loving lives.
And that's what I want to change.
It's not just consciousness of a women's consciousness.
It's not everybody.
You in consciousness has to change.
It has to rise up.
So tell me about actually getting into the race.
Tell me about what you're working on.
Well, I wrote for my application from California
and I got this letter from a little pony, a race worker.
He said women are not physiologically able to run
Americans when you can't have a medical liability.
And furthermore, it's a men's division race.
There are no Americans for women.
The longest sanctioned race for women is in my own account.
Because that's called a human.
And of course, women thought that too.
And so it's women's options with women like their girls
who run more than a mile and a half.
And so the women were buying into this thing.
Nobody challenged it.
So in order to challenge something, you have to be outside of it.
But you also have to be in it.
You have to.
So if I had been in the world of sports,
I probably would have learned a lot of things.
So I said all the more means of the run.
What are you going to do in addition to what you used to do?
Well, not me.
Show me me.
I thought about everything.
I questioned everything.
I wanted to understand.
And I was always asking, why this?
Why this?
What am I not saying?
Why is this numberable?
I love to solve problems.
And I see something that could be better.
And I think, wow, how can we make this better?
What do we need to do to make this better?
How did you solve the problem of getting into the race?
How did you get on service?
Well, I got home and we made a boarder race
after three days of Boston ride.
And I called my parents.
And they said, well, where are you?
We're in Boston.
We said Boston.
What are you doing?
We got here in California.
Where are you from Boston?
I came from Boston, America.
Oh, my God.
What is this crazy girl?
You know, so I was 23.
And they hit me up.
And they brought me home.
My dad thought I was delusional.
You know, I think they probably called the families to hide us.
We got that dog who's gone over the edge.
Yeah.
She thinks she's going to run to Boston.
Unfortunately.
And so unless I'm like, yeah, I can swim better than this.
He was really worried that he was going to actually try this
and kill myself.
And it was my mother who brought him to the start.
And which was the first time I can remember
that she had been on my side.
She spent her whole life trying to get me to conform
to the same stupid, deadly norms that had ruined her life.
And I was always rebelling.
She was on my side for the first time.
I mean, we actually called for the first time in years.
At the start of Boston, right?
Yeah.
She left me out of the car.
And I had a wounded soldier.
My biggest fear was they would keep me from running.
And I wouldn't be able to prove where I'd come here to prove.
And so I had this clothing sweatshirt on.
And my brothers bring me shorts and boys' sweatshirts.
And so I ran and started running.
I ran all over.
I knew I was going to get into this thing.
I saw the police and I was trying to avoid the police.
And so I finally found a little pump of bushes.
It's also the scars I would get.
And then I wound up a few miles.
And then as the race start began to get closer
and the members sort of gathered in the pen,
and I grabbed some bushes.
And then when the gun wound up,
I waited about half the path my life.
And then I jumped in.
And then I thought, well, this is it.
Now, if they discover I'm a woman,
they could easily shoulder me out.
They were totally unprotected, all of them.
And it only took them about 10 minutes.
And I told this before,
but they were studying my anatomy from the reader.
And...
Anymore of the nicest women.
And I could hear them going,
is that a girl?
Is that a girl?
I mean, despite the baggy pants and sweatshirt and everything,
so I was kicking up the beach.
And so I smiled and said, yeah, it is a girl.
And they said, great.
It's a girl.
I wish my wife was a man.
Because I was quite sure.
Well, I didn't know.
I mean, because when you do something,
you're outside of social harmony,
it would be rather hostile.
Even the crowd is going to be hostile.
And so I...
So then it was getting hot,
so I wanted to take off this sweatshirt.
And I said, I'm afraid they see I'm a woman.
They'll throw me out.
I still thought I could get arrested.
At least I knew I was doing something I wasn't just to be doing.
And so the man said, we won't let them throw you out.
So the man would protect it.
And I said, this is exactly it.
Men and women can be friends.
They can be buddies.
They can do things together.
And the man looked perfectly fine.
It wasn't an idiot.
Suddenly there was no war between the sexes.
It was just the way I wanted it to be.
And I think they were wondering why women couldn't run, too.
So we ran all the way to Boston.
Oh, I got to Wellesley.
It was a halfway mark in Wellesley.
Cheers.
And it was a speech time when we go through.
And the women just went crazy.
They knew I was coming, but my progress was being...
They figured out that I was a woman.
Yeah, they waited.
They were looking.
And then when they saw me, they just went crazy.
It's amazing.
I told them.
Yeah, there's one woman who's like, I'm Maria.
I'm Maria.
I mean, it sounds so bizarre, you know, because women are in an almost mainstream environment.
Yeah.
You don't have to take it back.
We're talking about 1960s to some.
Yeah, 15 years ago.
It's not 100 years ago.
15 years ago.
Yeah, I finished.
And my feet were killing me.
I had powerful blisters.
I knew running shoes.
I was totally dehydrated.
I didn't know I was supposed to drink water.
I was so dehydrated.
And so my face, would you be at the end of the day?
I was dropped.
Yeah.
And so I was just tiptoeing along.
And people telling me, I don't know what he's going to be here.
But no, I turned around and walked.
I think the crowds were all there.
Back in the 1960s, the men's background wouldn't have been as probably as slow where I was there.
It was not a competitive road back then, was it?
Yeah, but the waiting times were very much slower in the neighborhood.
Yeah.
And so I was down across the finish line.
And the press came around.
The governor of Massachusetts came down and took my hand.
And the next day was front-page deadlines.
And he didn't tell anyone?
No, well, he's seen verbally.
He said, oh, I don't believe I want to go to Renzo.
And then people started calling in and writing in.
And the reporters had been following and the radio had been broadcasting.
So it's overruled.
But anyway, they came around.
Oh, yeah.
So here it's at least.
Oh, Hubbride.
I just didn't hear it.
Hubbride, Chris Gallagher.
Then afterwards.
You can see the band section.
Yeah, that's my brother.
Afterwards.
I mean, they still couldn't get around this.
As I said, people thinking stereotypes.
And women make cookies.
They're in the kitchen.
So they wanted to get on the dress and do some cooking on the stove.
So I'm standing there making fudge.
This is proof that I was a deal woman.
Yeah, yeah.
This is what women do.
And if they're looking at this, they're going, wait a minute.
No, these things don't look in it.
It took a while for people to kind of get the new reality here.
So you ran again in 1967, 1968?
Yeah.
You're done?
So it says, of course, that you got one on after this.
Yeah.
Well, the race, women's marathons were not sanctioned by the age of 72.
So this is the pioneer era.
They call it now.
We ran in the same 26 miles, but it wasn't the sanctioned race.
It was sort of an unsanctioned women's division race.
Because we couldn't, you can't run in the men's division race any more than men
can run in the women's division race.
So we had our own.
Well, the first year I was in the women's division race.
There were two of us.
There were five of us.
And then that's the way social change starts.
It starts with one person or a small group of people.
And then it's no laws and then race.
So 1972 was the first sanctioned women's marathon.
And then 1984 was the first one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You were the first one.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Do you remember that?
Yeah.
Do you really know about the fact that it's because of the likes we did in 1984?
Change.
I didn't know about that.
Imagine 1984.
Imagine 1988.
There was no women's marathon.
I think it was a pivotal event for the running movement and the women's movement.
Because it really did change what people thought of women.
And that's the first step.
You have to change the consciousness.
Once the consciousness changes, then the actions continue.
And then when the actions change, then finally it's enough to be a social movement.
So my last question for you is how powerful is that?
Do you think you made yourself to that change?
Was it because of you?
It wasn't because of me.
I was one of them.
I was kind of like the crystal.
It was a pivotal moment.
But there were many things that already happened.
There was a right to happen.
There were already a lot of kinds of things happening in that kind of movement.
But it hadn't really organized it.
And running, I don't know, running was still kind of a leap in men's sport.
And did you still run?
Yes, I ran.
Yes.
And now we're at least there.
I haven't slept, I guess.
I was so jet lagged.
I remember long before I remember no more.
The number was 1966.
Somewhat.
Roder-Clarke, you're going to run tomorrow.
She's running.
Yes.
Applause
So this is a big pleasure to thank you for being here.
It's a pleasure to meet you.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Applause
