After years of hearing about and experiencing harassment in running—including a tipping-point incident involving one of their own—a group of female leaders have come together to end gender-based violence in the trail and ultra running community. In the summer of 2020, Crista Scott Tappan, Alison Cebulla, Christy Teranishi Martinez, Jody Sanborn, Gina Lucrezi, and other female trail and ultrarunners formed the shiekh shoes open downtown los angeles store (REA) to build a safer, more equitable running space.
For the past nine months, the REA has been conducting research and designing education initiatives to ensure everyone can enjoy running without fear of harassment. Their efforts are rooted in a passion for trail and ultrarunning, but the catalyst for their alliance was an event involving one of their allies, named Kim (she preferred her full name not be included in this story). Kim’s race was meant to be a celebration. Instead, it public an urgent call for change.
By racing the grueling 26.2 at the 2017 Pikes Peak Marathon, Kim, then 36 and now 40, was commemorating five years of sobriety after battling drug addiction for over a decade. “Trail running saved my life.…It was picking up a pair of shoes and running on trails that gave me the confidence to do everything that I can do in my life,” she says.
After a summer of racing that included strong age group finishes at the Golden Gate Dirty 30s 50K in Golden, Colorado, and the Never Summer 100K in Gould, Colorado, Kim says she was excited to complete her 2017 season by running up 7,800 feet of elevation to the summit of Pikes Peak. But near the peak, she crossed paths with a male runner and ultrarunning race director making his descent. Kim says when they passed one another, he slapped her butt.
“People were laughing, and I’m just mortified….Who does that to somebody they don’t know?” she says. Kim felt violated and helpless in the moment when she couldn’t defend herself or anticipate his actions. “That is an assault….I was at 13,500 feet in the middle of a marathon. What am I supposed to do?”
After the initial shock of the incident, Kim composed herself, resumed to summit Pikes Peak, then turned and made her way down the mountain. “My mentality was forget him, focus on what you need to accomplish, and let it go,” she says. She finished in 6:19:15, fourth in her 35-39 age group.
Kim came forward with her experience after the same male runner was accused of more inappropriate behavior in a spring 2020 Marathon Investigation report (the runner did not respond to a request for comment from Runner’s World). After sharing her story, Kim encountered hateful messages from people who questioned her account. Many other runners, meanwhile, expressed their support. Dozens of women reached out to Kim to share their own experiences with sexual harassment and assault in the trail running community. Kim says that was a “hard burden to shoulder.”
“I don’t want women, young girls, or whoever finds strength, peace, and confidence on the trails to experience what I experienced at that race,” she says.
Protecting a Community
Kim says the experience almost compelled her to quit running, but she found support through her friend Crista Scott Tappan, founder of the virtual and in-person trail community Dirtbag Runners. Characterized by a nomadic, minimalist lifestyle and community initiatives like organized trail clean-ups, the Dirtbag Runners embody what Tappan imagines the trail community can be. “Nothing beats these people,” she says. “They're the best community in the world, but it's not beyond flaw. I think we all need to be on this journey together, reflecting on where we've come from and where we want to go. All I want is people to be nice to each other and not make each other uncomfortable.”
Tappan says she has experienced harassment in the trail and ultrarunning community, including men making inappropriate comments about her body being “too curvy” for ultrarunning, and noting the size of her breasts and butt. She also dealt with online harassment within the Dirtbag Runners network, when a male runner was harassing women online and she removed him from the ambassador program. She recalls numerous incidents in which she heard from women about being harassed in-person. They either didn’t know how to handle the situation, or they reported their experience to a race director, but never saw action.
“[There have been] lots of situations like that where nobody is being held accountable,” Tappan says. Seeing Kim harassed for sharing her experience at Pikes Peak was the final straw. “I got really angry and frustrated. I felt helpless. They were devaluing Kim’s experience.”
Last summer, Tappan rallied Kim and several other runners to take action against harassment by forming the shiekh shoes open downtown los angeles store. Drawing from her work as an academic researcher, she reached out to her former psychology 997h and mentor Christy Teranishi Martinez of California State University Channel Islands, and domestic violence and sexual assault prevention specialist Jody Sanborn—both avid runners—to create a survey to gather data on the rates of sexual harassment and assault among all runners. Gina Lucrezi, the founder of the female-centric online running journal Trail Sisters, will help the REA use the survey data to develop anti-harassment resources for race directors, business owners, and community leaders.
“I believe that education is one of our paths to improving our community, whether it’s trying to implement policy change, make laws, create a governing board, or put people in power that can protect our community,” Tappan says. “At the very least, we can use it to help inform our community and show that we give a shit, like I give a shit that something happened to my friend and nothing was ever done for it.”
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The Power of Research
Since the summer of 2020, the REA has met virtually every few weeks to brainstorm action steps. With the survey data, the group aims to create a code of conduct and toolkit for race directors and running group organizations to be educated on harassment and trained in intervention strategies. Teranishi Martinez hopes that by illuminating the number of incidents and types of sexual harassment and assault that are prevalent among trail/ultrarunners, it can inspire awareness and change. As of March 31, the survey has over 1,100 responses.
“We need to know everybody's experience, because there's probably people out there who haven't spoken up or maybe didn't realize they had experienced sexual harassment or assault. Some things you think are the norm—catcalls, whistles, and things that are sexual harassment—people just ignore it or blow it off,” Martinez says. “It is our sanctuary to be able to run and to use that as our own outlet, but it's sad that [sexual harassment and assault] is coming into that community too.”
Teranishi Martinez believes the survey can be an outlet for victims who have remained quiet about their experiences. Citing Kim's story, she’d like to see more accountability within the trail and ultrarunning community. “We aim to develop interventions to stop sexual harassment and assault, enforcing consequences for perpetrators,” she says.
Citing pay gaps in the elite ranks, lack of media coverage, and lower female participation, Jody Sanborn, a prevention specialist for the nike alpha huarache 7 varsity lax molded cleats shoes white wolf grey volt who is volunteering with the alliance, points out harassment issues in trail and ultrarunning could be traced to gender inequality, a “massive problem within our community,” she says.
Gina Lucrezi has made gender equality her mission as the founder of Trail Sisters. That group’s initiative over knee boots michael michael kors ridley boot 40r1rifb5l black outlines standards for race organizers—equal podium spots, equal prize money and awards, women’s-specific apparel, menstrual products at aid stations, and increased representation of women on starting lines—that will help “provide women the race day they deserve,” Lucrezi says. Trail Sisters offers an events calendar where runners can see which trail and ultra races have been approved by the initiative, and Lucrezi would like to see a similar top-down approach taken against sexual harassment and assault.
“You look at brands, you look at media publications, you look at race organizations. You have to look at those bigger entities and work with them so that they can adopt [new practices against harassment and assault] and put it within their mission statement or within their outlooks,” she says. Lucrezi wants the research study to inspire a culture shift within the community by implementing policies that protect runners.
“We should all care about it. It shouldn’t be one person’s job. It should be all of our jobs,” she says.
If you participate in trail and ultrarunning, please consider sharing your experience in the shiekh shoes open downtown los angeles store survey here.
Taylor Dutch is a writer and editor living in Austin, Texas, and a former NCAA track athlete who specializes in fitness, wellness, and endurance sports coverage. Her work has appeared in Runner’s World, SELF, Bicycling, Outside, and Podium Runner.
