By Mac Neely

Have you noticed all the runners lately? They might be finishing up their training for the Mancos Half Marathon on July 25 at the Mancos Public Library.

I bet you didn’t know that for the first 2,700 years of the Olympic Games, women were excluded. No woman in the official distance ran at all. And that has been carried over into our Olympic Games.

Women who dared to run (but not qualify) were yelled at, had garbage and bottles thrown at them, and one woman even had her clothes torn off.

The reasons men gave for objecting to women running were mainly health-related; they thought women might injure their birth organs or develop muscles and become masculine. But the men didn’t know that women eventually wouldn’t give in.

For a while, it was dicey. In 1950, a woman ran the 200 meters in the Olympics, but in 1966, a woman’s application was rejected. In 2000, women were finally allowed to run the 300-meter steeplechase.

In 1960, Grace Butcher won the National Indoor Championship.

In 1994, Oprah Winfrey, after strenuous training, ran the Marine Corps Masters in Washington, D.C., and the word was out: Oprah did it, so can you! Women began running.

Now we need to head back to Mancos and the history of 10 women who lived here, and some still do. Shirley and Howard Whipple moved here in 1957 with their 10 children. When the girls reached Mancos High School, they met Jamie Silver, the school’s band leader. She brought the Girls Athletic Association to the school and instilled an interest in sports in all the children. In 1972, the first girls track team was born. (There is a mention of a track team in the ’30s, but I couldn’t find more information.) The Whipple kids all took part in running – the picture shows 15 members of the family two years ago with T-shirts saying “Running On Whipple Time.”

The Whipples have run in every Mancos Days Fun Run since the beginning – two years ago, the girls ran in the Honolulu Marathon, and pushed their mother over the goal line in her wheelchair.

One of the girls will not be running this year for the first time,(I think she said she was 58, so we can excuse her for once!) She went to the library and signed up. She gets the T-shirt, but won’t be running. And that’s what those of us who don’t or can’t run can do: Go to the Mancos Public Library, sign up for $30, get a T-shirt, then enjoy the race on the 25th, and be happy that you could contribute to our library in a good way.

Please notice the art work on the T-shirt. It was done by Brad Goodell, father of Wyatt Goodell, who is one of the cartoonists I use. The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree does it?

Beer will be available near the library on that day, courtesy of the Brewery. (Thank you for helping our town.) Servers for the beer are needed.

Most of all, runners are needed. Please sign up soon and make your mark.