Ep181: Katie Holmes Women’s Running History Breaking the Rules

December 26, 2024
This week on Hear Her Sports is writer and runner Katie Holmes. Katie is currently researching and writing a book on Women’s running history with a focus on women who break the rules. She is also interested in and researches older women runners, like herself. You can read more about running as an older woman on her blog Run Young 50.

In the episode, Katie and host Elizabeth Emery talk about discovering her competitive side through running, being an older female athlete, the discussions she’s having with a bunch of older, fast, British female runners who made their mark in running history, the importance of history, and her upcoming book due to be published by Bloomsbury Sport in 2026. Katie Holmes is a writer and runner in her early sixties. She lives in Nottingham, UK. Katie started her RunYoung50 blog in 2014 because she wanted to share the stories of female runners over 50 and highlight their achievements.

Katie is also an independent sports historian, focusing on the history of women's endurance running. Her work is driven by a desire to capture stories which might otherwise be lost and to recover, and uncover, stories which have faded out of the collective memory due to the marginalisation of women in sport.

In 2020 Katie was awarded an Independent Researcher Fellowship by the Women's History Network towards her research into Scottish distance running pioneer Dale Greig.

Katie is a member of the British Society of Sports History and has presented at two BSSH annual conferences. In 2022, she was awarded the Society’s Sporting Inequities Prize for outstanding work in an under-researched area – for her conference paper “The Reluctant Bride” (on the governance of women’s athletics in the UK in the 1970s).

Katie is a trustee of Athlos, a small UK charity which makes historic athletics books available free of charge online. She is researching and writing a book on the history of women’s distance running in the UK. It is due to be published by Bloomsbury Sport in 2026.

RunYoung50
Find Katie on Instagram, Facebook, and Threads
Scottish runner Dale Greig
… “before my time” Joyce Smith
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1st woman to run the Boston Marathon as an officially registered competitor, Kathrine Switzer
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