Since no one has written in with suggestions (shame on you all!), I’m going to offer my own Tough Broad this time.

As many of you know I am now about 33 weeks pregnant and roughly the size of a Buick, so my daily runs have turned into 3-mile strolls.  This sad state of affairs has led to my fervent daydreams about the fall, when I will (hopefully) be back in shape enough to compete in another marathon:  maybe NYC this time, or Twin Cities?

With all of the race options available, it’s hard to imagine a time when a woman didn’t have any choices at all; women make up a large percentage of the pack in almost every modern race, and there are even marathons dedicated strictly to women, such as the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco (where, incidentally, you can have the slightly dubious pleasure of being awarded your own personal Tiffany’s necklace by a tuxedo-clad firefighter as you finish.  Some of us would much prefer being handed a tall, frosty beer by a member of the Village People when we finally hobble across the finish line, but perhaps we’re in the minority).

Anyway, things have progressed so far that it’s easy to forget there was a time when women were not allowed to run marathons (for various reasons, none of them having anything to do with logic) and when a woman named Kathrine Switzer decided to change that by running in— and sexually “integrating”— the revered Boston Marathon in 1967.

Her story is now the stuff of legend:  how she had to enter under the name “K. Switzer” so that nobody would realize she was female and thus stop her before she began, the malevolent looks and comments she suffered from spectators as she ran, and even the now-infamous physical attack by Jock Semple (a Boston Athletic Association official, and one of the race organizers), who was so outraged at a young woman’s temerity in besmirching his pure athletic contest with her presence that he attempted to drag her out of the street.

Katherine was ultimately able to finish what she started (due in part to the support of her then-boyfriend Tom Miller and other male runners who supported her), and her ambition and courage have led directly to greater opportunities for modern female distance runners.  So let’s hear it for K. Switzer, this week’s Tough Broad.  In her honor, ladies, register and run a marathon— she made it possible for you to do so.

Jeanine Casler lives, runs, and writes in Evanston, Illinois.

The above nickname was originally used (along with other not-so-fond monikers like “Iron Knickers” and “Attila the Hen”) to refer to Margaret Thatcher, a woman whose reign many (including myself) would rather blot from their memories, but it definitely applies to Arizona trail runner Michelle Felicetta.

In fact, a recent unintentionally funny Runner’s World article about Felicetta has spurred me on to start a new feature as part of my fortnightly postings: let’s call it,

Tough Broad of the Week

What did she do to earn this august title?  Well, it seems that during one of her regular trail runs last fall Felicetta was attacked by a rabid fox, which first bit her foot, and then sank its teeth into her left forearm, hanging on like she was a juicy steak and it was a. . . well— a rabid fox.  Many people (probably including myself) would have taken this opportunity to scream or jump up and down like idiots; not our heroine.  Instead she calmly clamped her other hand around the clinging, vampiric fox’s neck, turned around and ran the 1.5 miles back to her car, where she subsequently flung her furry hitchhiker into the trunk and drove to the nearest hospital to get the shots she knew would be needed.

If you have an example of another woman who recently demonstrated extraordinary strength and presence of mind (see Christina Durgin’s note on her Mom, for example), please send it along and share the inspiration with me/us.

Jeanine Casler lives, runs, and writes in Evanston, Illinois.

The famous quotation from Juvenal’s tenth satire, usually translated as “a sound mind in a sound body,” came to my somewhat sound mind this past weekend when I was watching the Oscars.

Though there are countless films made about real-life athletes and their amazing physical feats (Chariots of Fire, Prefontaine, Ali, Without Limits, etc.) I’ve always found the movies that focus equally on the mental and emotional fitness of their subjects to be the most compelling.  Here’s a brief rundown of a few of my recent favorites:

Endurance (1999, dir. Leslie Woodhead).  I’m always a sucker for a movie about a marathoner, but this quiet film about Ethiopian running phenom Haile Gebrselassie is a testament to the power of the human mind.  We are able to see that it was determination alone that propelled Gebrselassie from scrawny, rural farm boy to Olympic champion.

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (1998, dir. Aviva Kempner).  This story of the handsome, gentlemanly Greenberg, the first major Jewish star in baseball’s major leagues is alternately funny, sad, and inspiring— the latter particularly so in light of the behavior of some of the sport’s recent “stars.”

Touching the Void (2003, dir. Kevin MacDonald).  This documentary about the two mountaineers who had a harrowing, near-disastrous experience while climbing in the Andes is especially interesting because of the incredible mental toughness exhibited by both men and the physical suffering one of them had to endure and overcome after being left for dead by his companion.

Encounters at the End of the World (2007, dir. Werner Herzog).  Encounters deserves its Oscar nomination for best documentary not only for the otherworldly views (both under and above water) of Antarctica captured by Werner Herzog and his team, but also for the fascinating stories of the motley set of men and women who live and work in the South Pole at the McMurdo Research Station, dedicating their lives to science and expanding the boundaries of human knowledge, often at great risk to themselves (like the divers who explore the sea floor under the ice without a tether line, trusting that they will be able to somehow find their way back to the hole they made to enter the water, or the scientists who study Antarctica’s active volcanoes— and by study, I mean climb down inside them).

Man on Wire (2008, dir. James Marsh).  I have actually not yet seen this film about tightrope-walker Philippe Petit’s famous illegal high-wire walk between the twin towers in 1974, but it won the Oscar, and interviews with Petit suggest he sees his accomplishments as being due to mental fortitude as much as physical stamina. As he says,

To me, it’s really so simple, that life should be lived on the edge.  You have to exercise rebellion.  To refuse to tape yourself to the rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge.  Then you will live your life on the tightrope.

Have any favorite “healthy mind in healthy body” examples of your own?  Please send ‘em along!

Jeanine Casler lives, runs, and writes in Evanston, Illinois.

At >6 months and counting, I’m getting to the stage that some of you mothers out there may remember;  my run is now more accurately described as a plod, and walkers and runners leap out of my way when they hear me coming because my labored breathing seems to suggest either that 1) I’m about to keel over on top of them, or 2) I am a homicidal maniac on a rampage.

Given the fact that my increased weight and unwieldiness have recently made it much more difficult to run regularly, I decided to cut back on my (already negligible) “mileage” and reserve a few days a week for swimming instead.  After all, it’s probably THE most recommended exercise for pregnant women, due to factors like allowing you to raise your heart rate in a healthy way that should not cause overheating and not adding increased weight or stress to your (already-stressed) joints.

Squeezing my burgeoning body into an old, stretched-out, 2-piece bathing suit, I literally took the plunge into Northwestern University’s impressive, Olympic-size swimming pool.  Rather than being daunted by all the trophies and pennants lining the high walls, or the slender, dolphin-esque lap-swimmers in the lanes bordering mine, I was able to lose myself in the views of frigid Lake Michigan out of the floor-to-ceiling windows; it was bliss to glide gently along, feeling so grateful— for once— not to be fighting against gravity.

When I finally got out of the pool and made the walk back to the locker room, what other people thought about how I looked was the furthest thing from my mind.  To my surprise, the woman in the shower next to mine started a conversation, mentioning that she’d competed in a swim meet 10 days before delivering her second child (!)

It’s the best thing you can do for yourself.

She said of swimming during pregnancy, adding,

You look beautiful!

Ok, so maybe that last bit was a slight bending of the truth designed to make me feel less like a baby beluga, but all in all, my visit to the pool provided a great literal and figurative lift that many women should seek out, especially later in pregnancy when they might feel like the weight of the world (or at least roughly 15-20 pounds of it) is settled around their midsection.

Jeanine Casler lives, runs, and writes in Evanston, Illinois.

You would think that the recent frigid temperatures and neverending snowpiles in the Midwest would have the effect of bringing walkers, runners, bikers and automobile drivers closer together— comrades in arms, battling the elements to exercise and live our lives the way we want to, and all that.  Well, you would be wrong.

Take it from a usually nonbelligerent jogger who almost came to fisticuffs this past weekend, the vehicle-pedestrian divide is as wide as ever.  Running along one of my usual routes, north along the lakeshore, I slipped onto the road for about a block.  Yes, I know, runners belong on the sidewalk, but this particular block is on a barely-traveled residential strip of brick-lined road, with enormous mansions on one side and a public park on the other, and the sidewalks in this area are pretty much solid ice.

When a sleek, black Mercedes— the only car on the road— was coming in my direction, I assumed that the driver would be considerate and perhaps slow down a bit, or at least keep to his own side of the street.  No such luck.  Instead, the driver actually sped up, moved over to the opposite side of the road, and leaned on his expensively-loud horn, as if to say,

Get the [bleep] out of the street!

Now, you would think that as I’d just come from a restful, soothing prenatal yoga class and had already been running for a few miles, lulled into a fitness trance by the restful, soothing voice of John Legend on my iPOD, my response would be suitably mellow; perhaps I’d smile beatifically and wave, or flash the driver a peace sign.  Well, you would be wrong again.  I flashed him a sign, but it wasn’t too peaceful.

This was wrong for so many reasons, not the least of which is the visual incongruity of a bulging-bellied, ninja-outfitted pregnant woman committing an act of blatant vulgarity.  I mean, mothers-to-be are supposed to be sitting peacefully in rocking chairs, knitting booties and gazing blissfully into the distance, imagining the face of their perfect future offspring.  In addition, the sleek, black Mercedes started to reverse back towards me.  Fear of being a victim of road rage did what nothing else can these days— it made me run FAST.

As you can see, I lived to write another day.  But this little incident had me thinking about how easy it is to lose perspective.  If, when we’re biking, we think about things from the drivers’ and runners’ points of view, and when driving think like a runner or a biker, many of our petty altercations (and even more serious road accidents) could be history.

Jeanine Casler lives, runs, and writes in Evanston, Illinois.