The Boston Marathon has changed a lot in the 37 years since the gender barrier was broken.
BOSTON (AP) – Kathrine Switzer lined up for the 1967 Boston Marathon as just another runner looking for a challenge.

Four miles in, she became a pioneer.

Issued a starting bib for the all-male race only because she entered under the name “K. Switzer,” she became the event’s first official female competitor. But to finish, she had to get past a race official who tried to tear her number off as she ran.

“I didn’t understand the issues. I just loved running,” she said this week after returning to Boston for the 108th edition of the race.

“I didn’t realize until later that they were the same issues other women were fighting for,” she said. “I put it together in the next 22 miles.

“That incident changed my life. It gave me the inspiration to do what I want to do.”

What Switzer wanted to do was create athletic opportunities for women. Her lobbying paid off when the Olympics added a women’s marathon for the 1984 Games, and her impact will be felt again in Boston this week.

In the biggest change for the Marathon since it officially went coed in 1972, women will get their own start – their own race, essentially – when they begin the 26.2 mile trek from Hopkinton to Boston 29 minutes ahead of the men.

“We’ve gone from exclusion to exclusive,” Switzer said. “It’s very exciting. I’ve been talking about it – bellyaching about it – for years.”

It is a path that has been charted by other marathons, including London, New York and Los Angeles; the Olympic marathon and world championships have completely separate races. But changing Boston, the longest-running of the world’s long runs, came a little more slowly. First considered in 1995, the idea was tabled because organizers didn’t want to do anything drastic before the centennial edition the next year. Then, planners were concentrating on the millennium edition and on security in the races following the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Traditions are hard to change in Boston. That’s a fact,” said Guy Morse, the executive director of the Boston Athletic Association, which organizes the event. “So we made sure we were sure.”

Still attached to the traditional noon start, the top female runners will leave Hopkinton at 11:31 a.m. (television coverage begins at 11:30). The elite men will leave 29 minutes later, which should get them to the finish line in Boston’s Back Bay about 10-15 minutes after the women’s winner.

One of the odd twists of the timing is it splits the elite women from the thousands of female recreational runners who will follow the men across the starting line. Only those who qualified for the early start will be eligible for prize money.

But race organizers believe the change brings many more advantages – primarily: safety.

With the women running their own race, the lead truck with television cameras and other media doesn’t have to weave among the men who fall off the pace. In the past, the trucks couldn’t join the women’s race until it passed Ebenezer’s Restaurant in Framingham, seven miles in, after the crowd had thinned, so TV coverage will be complete, and less cluttered.

Being in the front will allow the women to run a cleaner race – that is, without interference from male also-rans who like to see themselves on television or use the elite females for pacing. Some women also like the new setup because they can see the other competitors better, instead of having to pick them out from a crowd of men. Race organizers hope it will help draw the top runners to the event.

But others say they will miss the fraternization.

“It will be a little tougher because you don’t have the men,” said Malgorzata Sobanska, of Poland, who finished second here in 2002. “When it’s windy, you can hide behind them.”

Joan Benoit Samuelson, who won the race in 1979 and 83, said she preferred the company of men to running alone; the field then wasn’t as complete as it is today. Switzer thinks that will be the most difficult adjustment for those used to competing in the shadow of the men.

“It’s a lot different than being in the front of the race,” Switzer said. “You don’t feel as naked; you don’t feel as vulnerable.”

Switzer wasn’t the first woman to run here; Bobbi Gibb jumped out of the bushes at the start in 66 to stake that claim. But it was Switzer’s tussle with BAA official Jock Semple that made her run the one to be remembered.

Five years before Title IX, amid the general tumult of the 1960s, Switzer was warned of horrible things that would happen to her anatomy and her social life if she ran such a grueling race.

“You’re not going to get a boyfriend. You’re never going to have children,” she remembers being told. “It was socially unacceptable. I needed to be protected from myself.”

Despite the rude greeting Switzer received in her first race, women have come to be welcome in Boston. Switzer returned to run – legitimately – in 1972, and finished in the top five for four straight years; she won the New York Marathon in 1974.

This year, she will provide TV commentary for the race for the 25th straight year, and get a chance to see a woman be the first to cross the finish line in Copley Square.

“Now we’re the game, man,” she said. “We’re the stars.”

AP-ES-04-17-04 1327EDT