If Tish Hamilton is being honest, she doesn't consider herself a pioneer in women's running. She looks at titans of the sport like Kathrine Switzer and activists like Alison Mariella Desir—"They're legit," Hamilton says. But Hamilton's work in the sport—as the first female executive editor of Runner's World magazine—is nothing to sneeze at. Hamilton calls the marriage of her two passions—running and journalism—a privilege. She helped usher in the second running boom, one driven largely by women, one step behind the helm of the go-to magazine for runners. The mission was to broaden the coverage of the sport—from elites to weekend warriors doing incredible work—and with that, bring in a more varied audience, including women.

Anne Audain is a three-time Olympian and former professional runner for New Zealand. She had success as a very young athlete, qualifying for the 1972 Munich Olympics at age 16, though she wasn't able to compete until the 1976 Montreal Olympics, when she was 20. However, the road to discovering her talent wasn't without its challenges. Anne, who was adopted as a baby, was born with a bone deformity in both feet, which she wasn't able to correct with surgery until she was 13 years old. After more than a year of rehab and recovery, Anne hit the ground running, literally. Despite having competed in her first Olympic Games in 1976, she only went pro in 1981, and went on to have a storied career, breaking several course records on the US road running circuit and winning multiple Commonwealth Games medals. She retired from competition in 1990 and is now based in Evansville, Indiana.

Eileen Waters Connolly was a trailblazer in American long-distance running, part of the first generation of women to compete in the sport. In 1972, she made history by setting a world record in a 50-mile race on a track in Santa Monica, finishing in 7:05:31. Even more impressive, she ran negative splits—completing the second half 23 minutes faster than the first. A year later, she returned and broke her own record, cutting 10 minutes off her time. She died in 2016 at 71 from adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC), a rare form of cancer. As she aged, she never lost her sense of humor or self-effacing nature. She was quoted as saying, "When you get
old, you just show up and most likely you'll win your age group."