BURSTA few miles into the inaugural Every Woman’s Marathon in Savannah, Georgia, on November 16, I watched a woman running ahead of me drop her water bottle. She seemed frustrated with herself (it was a warm day!), but resigned that it was gone forever, too big a logistical nightmare to swim upstream against the tide of runners to retrieve it.
In any other race, that probably would have been the case. But that day, another woman grabbed the bottle, and accelerated ahead to reunite it with its owner. In return, the water bottle owner gifted the good samaritan one of the many friendship bracelets on her wrist, which then set off a flurry of friendship bracelet trading amongst our pack of runners that lasted at least a mile.
That was the spirit of the Every Woman’s Marathon, a race designed for women and put on by Gonna Need Milk (or MilkPEP, the dairy industry organization behind the famous “Got Milk?” campaign of the ’90s). Over the course of the weekend—which included panels with the race’s esteemed captains, cooking demonstrations, yoga and mobility classes, and a post-race festival headlined by Natasha Bedingfield—I lost count of the number of times I thought, “This would never happen at another race.”
Some of that was probably just a product of the fact that the participants were over 90 percent women. Alysha Flynn, the official run coach of the Every Woman’s Marathon, said it was the best-smelling race she’d ever run. And Alison Mariella Désir, one of the race’s captains and the author of Running While Black, says that the water stations were the cleanest she’d ever seen. “This one volunteer said, ‘You are the nicest participants I’ve ever had!’” Désir said. “People were drinking their water and placing the cup in the trash can. I’ve never experienced that in my life.”
The difference between the Every Woman’s Marathon and your typical race felt particularly stark to me having just run the New York City Marathon two weeks prior. While I love that race, the environment can feel cutthroat, and this year in particular, I noticed just how often I was elbowed, bumped, and clipped—always by men, who never acknowledged me. Nothing of the sort happened to me during the Every Woman’s Marathon. As Désir put it during a panel, “women don’t just care about our own lived experience—for better or for worse, we care about the lived experience of the people around us.”
But there was also plenty about the race that was by intentional design. “I go to a lot of races, and particularly as a first-timer, you enter the space and you can feel overwhelmed, lost, insignificant,” Désir said. “This race did everything to make sure you knew that you being there was important. We were all part of this really special moment; everyone could feel the enormity of it.”
At the expo, for instance, there was a colorful wall featuring a magnetic name tag for each runner, the color of which corresponded to the number of marathons they’d run. The simple act of wearing name tags at all opened the door for conversation throughout the expo’s events.
“This race did everything to make sure you knew that you being there was important.” —Alison Mariella Désir, runner, activist, and author
The color-coding was particularly conducive to making connections: First-timers could see they were in good company in the sea of pink tags (40 percent of the race’s participants were running their first marathon). Those on their second marathon (orange tag) could ask those who’d run between 11 and 30 (yellow tag) for advice, and all of us could marvel at the women wearing the rainbow tags, which meant they’d run over 60. It felt like we each had permission to proudly own our race, whether it was our first marathon or hundredth, and whether we’d finish in three hours or seven.
For Flynn, even the race’s color scheme itself was significant. “It was so bold, it was so bright—you couldn’t look at it and not feel empowered by it,” she said. “When I was staring at the wall of everyone’s names, when I got close to it, I could see all the different colors. But when you stood back, it all became one. To me, that felt really symbolic, like a visual representation of our strength as women and our strength when we come together as a community. I was like, that boldness is us.”
Désir and the other captains—2018 Boston Marathon champion Des Linden; Olympic bronze medalist Deena Kastor; Kathrine Switzer, the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon; and Danielle McLaughlin, a two-time cancer survivor, amputee and champion paratriathlete—also contributed to the sense that each runner mattered, handing out medals at the finish line, posing for all the selfies that were requested of them, and proudly sporting the armfuls of friendship bracelets they were gifted.
And because we had opportunities to make those real connections before the race, by the time we were toeing the starting line on Saturday morning, we really did feel like a community. Intentionally or not, the course itself intensified that feeling, with lots of out-and-back sections that became high-five zones. “I don’t think that would have happened had we not all been talking before we even got to the starting line,” Flynn says. “I’ve run the Philadelphia Marathon many times, and there’s a giant out and back section, and there are no high-fives exchanged.”
The Every Woman’s Marathon has already announced it’ll be returning next year. This year’s race set a new standard for what all races should be doing to include both women specifically and new marathoners in general: lactation stations, well-stocked and plentiful porta potties, and a generous course time limit.
The success of this year’s race also proves that spaces like these are both wanted and needed. “It’s important that we have spaces where we can feel important, where we can feel valued, where we can show up as our authentic selves,” Désir said. “I really hope this is only the beginning of more spaces like this.”