11/20/2025
✨ The more we know…
“In 1959, she ran up a 14,000-foot mountain and became the first woman to finish a marathon in the U.S.—then went home and didn't know she'd made history for 50 years.
In August 1959, Arlene Pieper stood at the starting line of the Pikes Peak Marathon in Manitou Springs, Colorado, feeling slightly out of place.
She was 29 years old, a mother of three young children, a physical thera**st trying to get back in shape after pregnancies.
She'd started running as personal fitness, nothing more. No grand ambitions. No desire for recognition.
Just a woman who enjoyed the challenge of pushing her body and testing her limits.
When she saw an advertisement for the Pikes Peak Marathon, something in her said: "Why not?"
The Pikes Peak Marathon is not a normal race.
It's 26.2 miles of brutal mountain terrain—starting at 6,300 feet elevation in Manitou Springs, climbing relentlessly to the 14,115-foot summit of Pikes Peak, then descending the same rocky, treacherous path back down.
The altitude alone is punishing. Above 10,000 feet, the air is so thin that every breath feels inadequate, every step feels heavy.
Runners face altitude sickness, exhaustion, treacherous footing, and dramatic weather changes.
It's considered one of the most difficult marathons in the world.
In 1959, it was exclusively male.
Women didn't run marathons. It wasn't that they were formally banned—it was that the idea of women running 26.2 miles was considered medically dangerous, physically impossible, and socially inappropriate.
The medical establishment believed women's bodies couldn't handle such exertion. That their uteruses might fall out (yes, this was an actual medical belief). That marathon running would damage their reproductive systems.
That women were too fragile, too delicate for endurance athletics.
Arlene Pieper didn't particularly care about any of that.
She just wanted to run up the mountain.
She registered for the race. No one stopped her. The race organizers, bemused but not hostile, let her start.
She lined up with the men, wore running clothes appropriate for the terrain, and when the gun fired, she began running.
The first miles were steep climbs on rocky trails. Arlene's legs burned. Her lungs struggled with the thinning air.
Around her, experienced male runners pushed ahead, many of them military personnel or serious mountain athletes.
Arlene kept running.
As she climbed higher, the altitude became crushing. Above 12,000 feet, she was moving through air that contained about 40% less oxygen than at sea level.
Her heart pounded. Her breathing came in gasps.
Some male runners around her were stopping, giving up, unable to handle the combination of distance and altitude.
Arlene kept running.
At the summit—14,115 feet, above the tree line, where the wind whips across barren rock—Arlene turned around and began the descent.
Downhill running on rocky mountain trails is treacherous. Every step risks a twisted ankle, a fall, exhaustion-induced mistakes.
Arlene kept running.
Nine hours and sixteen minutes after starting, Arlene Pieper crossed the finish line of the Pikes Peak Marathon.
Her 12-year-old daughter was waiting for her.
Arlene was exhausted, thrilled, proud of herself for completing such a difficult challenge.
She'd finished 19th out of 32 entrants. She'd outlasted more than a third of the field, many of them experienced male mountain runners.
And then... she went home.
She didn't give interviews. She didn't seek publicity.
She'd accomplished a personal goal, had a great story to tell her family, and returned to her normal life—raising children, working as a physical thera**st, living in Colorado.
The race result was recorded. Her name appeared in the official results: Arlene Pieper, the only woman finisher.
But in 1959, no one was tracking women's marathon records because women weren't supposed to be running marathons.
The significance of what Arlene had done simply went unnoticed.
Life went on. Arlene continued running recreationally. She raised her children. She worked.
She occasionally told the story about that time she ran up Pikes Peak, but it was just a personal achievement, a memory of a challenging day.
Meanwhile, the world of women's distance running was slowly, painfully changing.
In 1967, Kathrine Switzer famously fought off a race official trying to physically remove her from the Boston Marathon, becoming the first woman to officially run Boston with a bib number.
In 1972, the Boston Marathon officially allowed women to enter.
In 1984, the women's marathon was finally added to the Olympic Games.
All of these moments were celebrated as groundbreaking for women in sports.
And they were.
But none of them knew that a 29-year-old physical thera**st in Colorado had quietly, without fanfare or recognition, run a marathon in 1959—years before any of these "firsts."
For fifty years, Arlene Pieper lived with the memory of her Pikes Peak run as a personal achievement.
Just hers. Just a good day where she challenged herself and succeeded.
In 2009, a historian named Pam Reed was researching the history of women's marathon running in the United States.
She was going through old race records, trying to establish who the first women marathon finishers were.
She found the 1959 Pikes Peak Marathon results.
And there, listed officially, was Arlene Pieper's name.
Reed did more research. She confirmed that the race distance was a full marathon. She verified that Arlene had completed the entire course.
She established that this predated every other officially recorded women's marathon finish in U.S. history.
Then she tracked down Arlene, now 79 years old, still living in Colorado.
When Reed called and told Arlene she'd been the first woman to officially complete a marathon in the United States, Arlene was stunned.
"I had no idea," she said. "I was just running for myself. I didn't know I was making history."
For fifty years, Arlene Pieper had held a piece of sports history without knowing it.
The pioneering achievement that women's running advocates had been celebrating in the 1970s and 80s—it had already happened in 1959, quietly, on a Colorado mountain, by a mother of three who just wanted to see if she could do it.
In 2009, at age 79, Arlene was finally recognized.
The Pikes Peak Marathon honored her. Women's running organizations celebrated her achievement. She received recognition that was fifty years overdue.
But Arlene, characteristically modest, didn't see herself as a pioneer or a barrier-breaker.
"I was just running," she said. "I didn't think about making history. I just wanted to finish."
And maybe that's the most powerful part of her story.
She didn't run to prove women could do it. She didn't run to challenge medical establishment beliefs. She didn't run to break barriers or make statements.
She ran because she wanted to see what she could do.
And in doing so—accidentally, without intention, without recognition—she became the first.
Arlene Pieper ran up a 14,000-foot mountain in 1959.
She finished a full marathon when women weren't supposed to be able to.
She went home, raised her children, worked as a physical thera**st, and lived fifty years without knowing she'd made history.
She didn't run for glory or recognition.
She ran for herself.
And that might be the most radical act of all—doing something extraordinary simply because you want to, not because anyone's watching, not because anyone will remember, but because the challenge itself is enough.
Arlene Pieper was the first woman to finish a marathon in the United States.
She found out fifty years later.
And her response was essentially: "Oh, that's nice. I just wanted to see if I could do it."
Sometimes the most groundbreaking achievements are the ones where the person achieving them doesn't even realize they're groundbreaking.
Sometimes you carry history inside you without knowing it.
Sometimes you change the world just by running up a mountain because it's there and you want to try.
Arlene Pieper ran for herself.
And accidentally ran into history.”
