However, as he tried to drag Switzer out of the race, he was shoved off the road by Switzer’s boyfriend. In front of the news van, Jock Semple, the race official, raced after Switzer and attacked her. Finally, a news van caught up to take photographs of the woman runner. Switzer.” She began the race without incident, but slowly more and more runners and bystanders began to notice there was a woman running in their midst. Women were not at this time officially allowed to compete in the Boston marathon, so Switzer signed up to as the androgynous sounding “K. So in 1967 she, her boyfriend, and her trainer traveled to Boston to compete. Switzer made entering and finishing the Boston Marathon a goal. Switzer went on to attend Syracuse University where she would graduate with a bachelor’s degree (1968) and a master’s degree (1972). She and her family moved back to the States in 1949 to settle down in Virginia. Katherine Switzer was born in Amberg, Germany in 1947 to a major in the United States Army.

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