The Pioneer



Consolo at the Greater Clarksburg (WV) 10K

It was nothing more than a casual question thrown out at Facebook by Laura Pizmoht, probably just to draw comment – “What makes a runner hardcore? – and it brought a number of illustrative examples. I didn’t respond directly, but if I had, I might have said “A thirteen-year running streak,” alluding to the venerable Mr. Fred Kieser, and keeping things local.

But to keep things equal (and local too), I would have been obligated to say simply, “Kitty Consolo, 1985 Revco-Cleveland Marathon,” for that was where a then-KSU grad student pulled off a comeback no less improbable than what Joan Benoit had done just a year earlier at the Olympic Trials.

On the eve of the Cleveland Marathon and the 40th anniversary of Title IX, the time is right to reprise Consolo’s firsthand account of this experience, as well as what it was like to be a pioneering female runner at a time when ladies were not supposed to sweat, an NCAA Division I cross country team might have only one woman, sports bras had yet to be invented, and races sometimes were run in heavy leather “tennis shoes.”