A Race of Their Own

It’s exactly the forecast that race director Cory Freedman dreaded: predictions of 75 km/h winds, a 25 mm dump of rain, potential dangerous f looding around waterways like the Don River, which flows right alongside her race course in Toronto’s Sunnybrook Park. On a late October morning, runners from across Southern Ontario are driving through the storm to participate in Freedman’s usually sold-out Toronto Women’s Run Series. Typical for a woman’s event, many of the about 800 women and girls struggling to the start line of the 5k and 8k events are relative novices or even racing for the first time. On top of that anxiety, they have no idea what to expect. Will the races be cancelled? Will they actually have to run through this precursor to Hurricane Sandy? And how does one compete, stay warm, keep safe when Mother Nature is throwing a major hissy fit?

One comfort is the nature of the race itself – it’s an all-women’s event. When they arrive and hear the event is on, the sisterhood of runners creates an energetic and welcoming atmosphere – motivating runners to push through the conditions. Nothing seems quite as bad while women are hustling about in packs – middle-aged girlfriends, mothers and daughters and grandmothers, nine-year-old pony-tailed phenoms about to find out how fast they are. Even sponsored elites cuddle together from the port-a-potty line-ups to the bag check to the start line as if the first rule of women’s racing is to leave no woman behind.

All around me they shout out fuzzy feel-good slogans, tease each other playfully and hug. Women are inventing an entire language of hugging at these events, from the oh-my-I-lost-sight-of-you-for-a-minute wrist grab to the you-are-so-awesome back rub to the we’re-so-fabulous embrace at the start, repeated with suffocating intensity at the finish, all to communicate what it means to run together.

I’m racing alone, but two veterans of the women’s running community, Charlotte Davis and Francis Lamb, hail me enthusiastically at the start line. Davis wanted to race in the inaugural event five years ago, but it sold out before she could even sign up. She volunteered instead and loved it so much she’s been working the start line every year since. Their job in the chute is to keep the runners not only safe but feeling enthusiastic. The race director “is adamant that volunteers greet, encourage, cheer, celebrate and congratulate every single runner,” says Davis. “It makes it a more welcoming and supportive atmosphere than most mixed races and that attracts a lot of women who might not normally race. It’s striking a chord.”

Indeed, though the Toronto series struggled to attract sponsors when it launched during the recession in 2008, it has had no trouble attracting runners, regularly selling out. Now sponsors are starting to take note of the surging popularity of women’s events. A f ledgling national series, Run for Women, will double to six races across Canada this year and landed Shoppers Drug Mart as a title sponsor. In the United States, women’s events have exploded with at least eight national series (more than 200 events) vying for the fastest growing segment of the running market. According to Running USA, women now account for 55 per cent of all participants in road races and nearly 60 per cent at the half-marathon distance.

To explain the surging popularity of all-women’s races, you only need to look at the start line. Peering down on the starting corrals, announcer Debbie Van Kiekebelt, a former Olympian, urges runners to step up to the front. It may be her toughest call of the day. Davis and Lamb have been encouraging women to close the gap and join the elites on the line. But the women seem more interested in giving each other send-off hugs. Lamb, a 2:55 marathoner in the 1980s, has watched the women’s running boom explode. “That would never happen in a mixed race,” Lamb says. “Men would be elbowing and pushing people out of the way. In the mixed runs, the men are in front, men get the attention and the glory. This is about women, for women, and it celebrates the women’s experience.” These races, Lamb says, are “about the love” and likens the supportive atmosphere to a giant hug. “If you could bottle this energy, it would be amazing.”

Starts in the Brain

The positive energy, camaraderie and support in women’s races may best be explained by the way men’s and women’s brains are wired. Fired by ancient hormonal circuitry, shaped by primordial evolutionary goals, female brains have developed vastly different reactions to stress according to Dr. Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain. To alleviate anxiety – say of a race – men strive for rank in the social pecking order, for power, respect, even domination, which explains the aggressiveness of some at the start lines. It’s fight or f light time.

Women, four times more likely to suffer from anxiety given that our brains are hardwired to sense danger lurking everywhere, get our stress-relieving oxytocin rush by making social connections, to support and watch out for each other. Rather than fight or f light, women runners are learning to marshal up a third and ancient response to stress, a let’s unite and fight. As Brizendine puts it, a hug seals that social pact and releases calming oxytocin, which gives women runners a high even before the race starts – and energy.

When the horn finally blasts, the frontrunners go out hard, not competing against each other so much as with each other. I’m swept up in that pull, f lying out at a PB pace rather than my planned practice pace for an upcoming half-marathon. I struggle to slow down and remind myself not to blow my target race by going too hard in this one. But as I near the 2.5k turnaround of the out-and-back course, I feel fantastic, fast, yet in control, my brain dosed up on feel-good hormones.

The elites ahead of me get a charge from these races, too. They love competing for the chance to win outright, not just be first woman finisher. And without men clogging up the course, age-groupers can also see their competition and race head on. Swept up in the positive vibe of the event, I cheer and clap on the frontrunners rounding the turn until I realize that I’m among them. There are maybe only 15 ahead, entirely new territory for me, and it spurs me on.

The race means something special to every woman, no matter where she places. One tells me later that she had only ever run six times before. Her friends dragged her to the event, but she was thrilled to run her first 5k nonstop. “Now I’m hooked on running – and racing.” Another who had taken up running to lose weight says she would be too self-conscious to ever run in a mixed event. “I don’t want men looking at me,” she says, laughing. “I just feel more comfortable here.” Others tell me they love women’s races because they’re generally smaller and more intimate and definitely more welcoming for all sizes, paces, experience levels and ages. Another big draw, the races tend to support charities that focus on women and families. The female-centric features are also popular: clean and abundant port-a-potties, chocolate stations, jewelry instead of yet another finisher’s medal, post-race festivities with women’s music and firemen at the water stations.

Various Frills

With more women’s events emerging, each are developing their own unique character while still celebrating fitness and the running sisterhood at their core. At a few events – too few say some critics – there’s a focus on drawing elites and developing the next generation of talent. Ottawa, for instance, is one of the few to offer prize money to top finishers while the Toronto Women’s Run Series offers free registration to elites. Other races held at destination hot spots, such as Niagara Falls and the Zooma and Diva half-marathon series in the U.S., have developed a girlfriends’ weekend-away theme with resort getaways, local tours and parties adding to the hoopla. Others play to gender stereotypes with girly, pink princess themes, encouraging runners to wear tutus and tiaras, and inviting firefighters to beef up water stations and medal presentations. It’s not popular with everyone. “We don’t want over-the-top girly,” says Zooma’s Brae Blackley who left corporate law to found the series. “We want women to take themselves seriously. So we don’t encourage people to run in costumes or feather boas.”

Priscila Uppal, poet-in-residence at the London Olympics and author of the resulting Summer Sport: Poems, says she will only run in women’s races and can “defend” the girly frills “slightly.” She likens the events to a testing ground, a place where women can explore what it means to compete and be an athlete. “There have been a lot of bad stereotypes with being a female athlete,” she says. “What goes on [at a race] is a lot about breaking down those stereotypes. Women are battling the idea that being an athlete is not sexy or integral to who they are.” Still, Uppal, who regularly places top three in her age group, laughs that she’s running too fast to notice the firefighters. She’s more intrigued by the nature of the competition – that the race provides a safe space for women to unleash their competitive drive and also learn how to compete with each other.

At last October’s Toronto Women’s 5k and 8k, the top three run hard to the finish, with mere seconds separating them. In mixed races, this last dash can be the toughest for women. So many elites have stories of being locked in foot races with overzealous guys who use every nasty race tactic to claim bragging rights of beating the first female finisher – cutting her off then slowing down in front of her, crowding her, clipping her heels, even bursting ahead at the last second to take the ribbon put out for the first female finisher, as happened to Suzanne Zelazo (managing editor of Triathlon Magazine Canada) when she won the women’s Toronto GoodLife Fitness half-marathon in 2009.

At last fall’s race in Toronto’s Sunnybrook Park, Sasha Gollish takes the ribbon clean, to ecstatic congratulations from race announcer Van Kiekebelt. The Pan Am games gold medallist in 1971 has been calling these races since the inaugural one five years ago. “When I was competing,” she says, “women didn’t have this incredible camaraderie that they have today, that has developed from women running together, and it shows in these women’s races.”

As runners cross the finish line, Van Kiekebelt calls out the first names of each, though I confess I don’t hear mine. Perhaps it’s the shock of setting a massive PB at age 50. Rather than draining me, the effort fills me with confidence for my goal half-marathon the following week.  Maybe confidence is the ultimate medal awarded at women’s races. Despite the cold rain and wind, runners stick around to cheer runners in, creating a raucous, but supportive, celebration for the many first-time finishers. Race director Cory Freedman, bundled up in a parka, can’t get enough of the happy faces and the enthusiastic support. “People cheered them on, they had a good time, they want to keep running,” she says. “That’s pretty cool. This is living the dream.”

Flashback to the Future

An international women’s racing circuit developing future  Olympic stars and attracting world-wide media attention: That might sound like a far-fetched dream, but it’s actually part of running history.

The guest of honour at this year’s Niagara Falls Women’s Half- Marathon and the first woman to run the Boston Marathon with an official race bib, Kathrine Switzer, was instrumental in launching the Avon International Running Circuit in the late 1970s. Realizing that growing the sport was fundamental to getting the women’s marathon accepted into the 1984 Olympics, she worked feverishly with Avon to launch a race series on four continents. It was a success, garnering network TV coverage of marathons, developing future Olympians and drawing tens of thousands of women to the sport. “It was an example of corporate sponsorship creating a social revolution,” says Switzer who wrote about her proudest accomplishment in her memoir, Marathon Woman. “So many who became Olympians were products of that program. There was such talent out there, and they didn’t know it.”

But most of the races collapsed or morphed into other events when Avon withdrew its sponsorship in the mid-1990s. Last year, Switzer had a chance to revisit what might have been when she served as official starter for one of the few races that lasted: the Avon Women’s 10K in Berlin. About 18,500 women stepped up to that start line last spring. Such massive women’s races are common in Europe. In Dublin, the women’s 10K attracts 40,000, Vienna 30,000, Paris 20,000. “Imagine if Avon had stuck with the race series through the women’s running boom,” says Switzer. “Avon would own women’s running now.”

While Switzer is thrilled by the women’s running boom, she is concerned about the development of the next generation of elite talent and believes race series, sponsors and media all have a role to play. “Women have more endurance, stamina, balance and flexibility. It doesn’t make us better than men. It makes us different athletes. Men have been running the marathon for 2,500 years, women for only 30. We’re just beginning to explore women’s capability in the sport.”

Canadian Women’s Races

 Emilie Mondor 5K Memorial for Women,

Ottawa, June 22, 2013

Billed as the fastest women’s 5K in Canada, the event has prize money for open

and masters. runnersweb.com/running/EmilieMondor.html

Toronto Women’s Run Series

A three-event series of half-marathon, 10K, 8K and 5K distances, with about

1,500 runners in each. towomensruns.com

Island Girl, Toronto,

Sept. 22, 2013

An intimate half-marathon, half-marathon relay and 5K on Toronto Island, with a

festive Caribbean vibe and only 500 runners. islandgirlrunning.com

Niagara Falls Women’s Half Marathon,

June 2, 2013

This course takes 2,500 runners and walkers past the Falls twice and follows the

Niagara River. nfwhm.com

Calgary Women’s Run/Walk,

Aug. 25, 2013

This 5K and 10K (with mother/daughter divisions) is one of the oldest women’s

races in Canada, debuting in 1979.

calgaryroadrunners.com/events/calgary-womens-runwalk

Run for Women National Race Series

Doubling this year to six races (Vancouver, Calgary, Unionville, Ont., Quebec City,

Ottawa, Halifax), these 5K and 10Ks (with a 1K for girls 12-and-under) feature

Olympian keynote speakers and attract 1,500 to 2,000 each. runforwomen.ca

Margaret Webb blogs about running at margaretwebb.com