The Marathon and the Running Boom with Martin Dugard

Add us on social media or link to reviewed works 👉(https://linktr.ee/HistoryNerdsUnited)👈 Visit the HNU website 👉 (https://historynerdsunitedmain.com/) 👈 Check out Martin's Webpage 👉 (https://www.martindugard.com/) 👈 May 19, 2026 Author Martin Dugard Thumbnail photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...) On September 3, 1970, 127 people paid a dollar to run the New York City Marathon. Only one was a woman. Fifty-four years later, nearly fifty thousand people crossed that same finish line — and almost half of them were women. How does something like that happen? In this episode, we talk with Martin Dugard about his book The Long Run: Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter, Joan Benoit, Grete Waitz, and the Decade That Made the Marathon Cool. Dugard is a #1 New York Times bestselling author with over twelve million copies sold, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a longtime competitive runner, and a high school distance running coach with multiple California state championships to his credit. With The Long Run, he has written about the sport he has spent his entire life inside — and the result is something that works equally well as history, biography, and love letter to running. At the center of the story are four athletes who each, in their own way, changed what running meant in America. Frank Shorter's gold medal in the Munich marathon — the first marathon ever broadcast live on American television — lit a fuse that transformed the sport overnight. Steve Prefontaine became something American distance running had never had before: a genuine star, a rebel with a cause, a figure whose death at twenty-four only deepened the mythology around him. Grete Waitz arrived in New York in 1978 expecting to drop out at the halfway mark and instead won the first of nine NYC Marathon titles. And Joan Benoit crossed the finish line of the 1984 Olympic Games to win the first women's marathon in Olympic history, a race that should never have taken that long to exist. But Dugard's book is about more than four athletes. It traces the full arc of how a fringe pursuit practiced by a dedicated few became a defining cultural institution — weaving together the social movements, the rule changes, the remarkable supporting cast of coaches and competitors, and the sheer stubbornness of people who loved a sport the rest of the world had not yet caught up to. For runners and non-runners alike, this is a story worth knowing. Praised by Boston Marathon champion Des Linden, Runner's World editor Amby Burfoot, and Kirkus Reviews as a welcome and inspiring history of distance running's golden era, The Long Run is the book the sport has been waiting for. 📌 Keywords: #TheLongRun #MartinDugard #SteveePrefontaine #FrankShorter #JoanBenoit #GreteWaitz #MarathonHistory #RunningBoom #1970sRunning #NYCMarathon #OlympicMarathon #RunningHistory #HistoryPodcast #BookInterview #NonfictionBooks #SportsHistory #BookPodcast #BookTube #MustReadBooks #DistanceRunning