On the morning of Sunday, April 26, thousands of runners will lace up their shoes, pin on their bibs and set out from The University of Toledo campus on a course that winds through the city before looping back to where it all began.

For many, The Mercy Health Glass City Marathon is a bucket-list race — a fast, flat course in the heart of the Midwest that sends more than a third of its field to the starting line of the Boston Marathon every single year.

Michael Green, left, UToledo director of sustainability and energy efficiency, and Liam Walsh, assistant director of annual giving, run in a Glass City Marathon.

For UToledo, the marathon is something even more: a living piece of the University’s history, with a nod to Women’s History Month as well.

Organized by the Toledo Road Runners Club (TRRC), the race now starts and finishes on the UToledo campus each spring. This year, UToledo is celebrating that connection directly by paying the registration fee for all faculty and staff who run the marathon, half-marathon or 5K. A Rocket ID is required when registering.

A Starting Pistol, a Rocket Race Director and 175 Runners

Ask Jimmie Edwards how it all started and he will tell you there was no grand plan. Edwards, a UToledo Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, served as director of that very first Glass City Marathon in 1971.

“No group or organization was in charge,” Edwards recalls. “It was what it was: no frills.”

The first race started on Brookside, across Secor Road from the University, with UToledo President William S. Carlson playing a ceremonial role. “President Carlson agreed to stroll down to the start and fired the starting pistol at 9 a.m.,” Edwards said. “We also held an awards ceremony on campus.”

Of the 175 runners on the starting line, just four were women. But the women were welcome and that’s a detail that was ahead of its time.

A Piece of Women’s Running History

Among those four women was Kathrine Switzer. For anyone who follows the history of distance running, that name needs no introduction.

Four years after organizers of the then all-male Boston Marathon tried to force Kathrine Switzer off the course, she was welcomed to run and won the first Glass City Marathon in 1971. (Photos by Harry Trask)

Four years earlier, in 1967, Switzer had entered the Boston Marathon by registering under the name K.V. Switzer at a time when women were not officially permitted to run the race. When race director Jock Semple realized a woman was on the course, he tried physically to remove her. Other runners intervened, surrounding her so she could continue. She crossed the finish line.

The photographs from that day became iconic images in sports history, and Switzer’s defiant run helped ignite a movement that would eventually force the Amateur Athletic Union to change its rules in 1972, officially opening competition to women.

But a year before the AAU relented, before women’s marathoning was welcomed into the mainstream, Kathy Switzer ran the Glass City Marathon in Toledo. Edwards remembers it well.

“Kathy Miller Switzer came to Toledo, stayed at my house and won the Women’s trophy.”

In fact, she was the only woman to finish the course on an extremely hot and muggy race day — the kind of weather conditions that demand training and preparation.

According to Edwards, “I ran the race that day also. It was a challenge. But I always ran 100 miles every week for seven weeks leading up to any marathon.”

Today’s Glass City Marathon

The Glass City Marathon has come a long way since 1971.

Today, more than 6,000 participants register each year and Edwards estimates that more than half of them are now women.

The race itself has evolved as well, earning a reputation among serious runners as one of the fastest marathon courses in the United States, with a consistently high percentage of Boston Marathon qualifiers among finishers.

On April 26, the starting pistol will fire again. More than 6,000 runners will set out through Toledo’s streets and return to the finish line at The University of Toledo, where so much of this story began.

The post Miles of History: How a UToledo-Born Race Became One of America’s Fastest Marathons first appeared on UToledo News.

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