In honour of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, I decided to go on a dive to find out more about inspirational (or aspirational) women in running.
This first post is dedicated to Stamata Revithi, the first woman to run the original marathon in the 1896 Olympics. While her time was unofficial (more on that in a moment), her determination can teach us a lesson, even in 2021.
My information comes from a couple sources: Wikipedia was my starting point, but it references this article which profiles her accomplishment, by Athanasios Tarasouleas. I also used this blog post to provide supporting details.
Stamata Revithi was, according to the sources that talk about her, a single mother in her early thirties when the first modern Olympic games announced that a run in honour of the journey from the location of the Battle of Marathon to Athens would be included as an event.
As the story goes, she was en route from her hometown to Athens to find a job when she encountered a runner on the road who questioned why she was heading there on foot. As a runner, I find it funny to hear that a runner basically called out someone else for traveling a long distance on foot, but I digress. She explained her situation – she was poor and needed to head to Athens to find a job so she could support her 17-month old child. The runner suggested that she sign up for the race from Marathon to Athens. In doing so, she might earn a bit of coin and some notoriety on the side. He fronted her the cost of registration, and off she went.
When she tried to sign up, she was denied. The initial reasoning provided was that she was too late to register, but the fact that she would be the only woman to join the 7-runner roster probably didn’t help.
Did that stop her? No, it did not. She declared that she would do the race anyway, just unofficially. Journalists interviewed her, wherein she bragged that she could do the run in 3.5 hours, easily. Apparently her personality gained her a following among those who came to see the games. In addition to this following, however, came some good old-fashioned outright sexism, both from randos who told her she would get too tired (a comment to which she supposedly replied “Don’t demean us women when you men have been demeaned by the Americans”, which is such a flex), and from officials, like the clergy who would not give her a blessing for her journey because he would only bless official participants.
On March 30, 1896 at 8am, she left the town of Marathon on her own. We know this because she wrote down the start time, AND got it notarized by three different people. She ended up finishing her 40km run at 1:30pm – which again, we know because she made sure someone recorded and checked the time. As a result, we can conclude that she was the first woman to run the modern marathon.
As someone who has run a few marathons now, I can’t help but wonder what was going through her mind when she set about on her lonely solo journey.
Was it her grit and determination to stick it to the patriarchy that got her to the finish line?
Did she imagine herself lulling her child to sleep with stories of her run?
When Athens finally appeared on the horizon, did she feel that same adrenaline rush, or was she disheartened at the sunk cost?
Do you think she envisioned a future where other women like her could make the same journey nuisance-free?
There’s imagery floating around of a mysterious woman named “Melpomene” whom some also say ran the marathon, but a few sources say that this was likely a name given to Revithi after the fact; a tribute to the Muse Melpomene herself. What does it mean when a person is given an honorific inspired by the muse of tragedy? Just something to think about.
My next scheduled run is an easy 8k, which I will be dedicating to this fascinating original woman of the marathon scene. Though I won’t be running it barefoot like she supposedly did, because my feet hurt just thinking about that.
Happy Women’s History Month, and Happy (belated) International Women’s Day! Thanks for reading.
Road to Forty-Two 
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