Women's Running Pioneer Lynn Blackstone: "I Just Kept Going"

Lynn Blackstone competing in the 2025 New Balance 5th Avenue Mile, where she won the women's 80+ age group.

Lynn Blackstone has seen a lot of changes in women’s running since her first run around the reservoir in Central Park, back in the mid-1960s. At times she’s helped drive that change herself, though she tends not to see it that way. Lynn was one of the “Six Who Sat” at the start of the 1972 New York City Marathon to protest a so-called “separate but equal” rule that prohibited women from competing alongside men. The protest embarrassed the national governing body of track and field into changing the rule and allowing men and women to run together.

At the time, Lynn had run only one road race, the Crazylegs Mini Marathon (now the Mastercard New York Mini 10K), held a few months earlier as the first-ever road race exclusively for women. She joined the protest to support the two women entrants, Nina Kuscsik and Pat Barrett. She’s said she became an “accidental activist” that day.

“I Did Whatever Was Offered”

Born Lynn Terreri in 1940 in Morristown, New Jersey, Lynn grew up across the street from the local YMCA. “My mother insisted that we all learn to swim,” she said. “It was swimming and gym. People would say to my mother, ‘The Terreri girls are lovely, but they’re so athletic!’”

Lynn loved being active and did any sport offered—roller skating in middle school, basketball in high school and at all-women's Trinity College in Washington, D.C., where she was the co-captain. (Fun fact: Nancy Pelosi was a classmate.) “There weren’t a lot of sports available for girls, but I did whatever was offered,” she said. She also played golf, at her father’s urging. “He decided that all of his daughters should learn to play golf so they could play golf with their husbands,” she said.

Lynn moved to New York City in her early 20s and rented a basement apartment on the Upper East Side. Dave Blackstone, an upstairs neighbor, was a runner, and he’d stop by to visit Lynn and her roommates after running in Central Park.

“I was not doing any regular sports and had started noticing that I was putting on weight and thinking, ‘I really need to do something,’” she said. “Dave would come in from his runs, and even in the middle of winter he’d look really happy. One day I just went out there with him. It took me three tries before I could make it once around the reservoir without stopping. And from there, I just kept going.”

Lynn stopped worrying about her weight—though she considers weight control an important component of overall health and a benefit of regular running—and ran because it made her feel strong and capable. “It was wonderful,” she said.

From Runner to Competitor

Lynn (second from right) with Central Park Track Club teammates in 1972, including her husband, Dave (far right), Kathrine Switzer (bib W2), and Fred Lebow (far left). Photo courtesy of Central Park Track Club Tracksmith.

She made friends—“You knew everybody at the reservoir; you knew them all by name”—and would accompany them to New York Road Runners races at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, where she’d hand out water along the course. “They always needed people to do that, so they loved having me!” she said. She met Nina Kuscsik, Kathrine Switzer, Chloe Foote, and other top New York–area women runners, who inspired her to run more and to start thinking about racing.

Women runners were an unusual sight on city streets, and Lynn would often receive unwanted attention. “People would comment on my legs. I’d kind of roll my eyes and keep going,” she said. “I think they just didn’t know what to make of us.”

Lynn and Dave got married in the summer of 1972, the same year he founded the Central Park Track Club. Though she’s often named as a co-founder, she gives Dave all the credit. (Dave Blackstone died in 2009.)

By 1973 Lynn was racing regularly and felt ready to tackle the marathon distance. She ran the 1973 New York City Marathon in 3 hours and 55 minutes, placing third behind Nina Kuscsik and Kathrine Switzer. In 1976 she won the Yonkers Marathon. “I was doing very well,” she said.

The achievements of early women’s running pioneers inspired other women, making the sport bigger and more competitive. When Lynn ran the 1976 New York City Marathon—the first time the marathon course ran through the five boroughs—her time of 3:29 placed her 11th among 88 women finishers. New York Road Runners will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of thsi milestone race and 1976 participants like Lynn throughout the year.

385 Races and Counting

Lynn had two children and ran during her pregnancies, encouraged by Dave. “He’d say to me, ‘Get out there and run. Pregnancy is a normal state for a woman.’ It was very supportive to hear that at a time when not everyone felt that way,” Lynn said.

The NYRR results database shows Lynn has run 385 races. She still competes regularly at distances up to 10 miles and frequently wins her age group.

When other women ask her for running advice, her response is simple. “I say, listen to your body and know that over time you may have to reinvent what you think of yourself, but keep doing it,” she said. “It’s such fun and the community is wonderful and so supportive.”

Young women runners today are “more disciplined” than she was, she said, perhaps because they perceive no barriers to their success as women athletes. “There used to be men who, they just weren’t going to have a woman beat them, and they’d say that. I think today women don’t have that experience."

Barriers or not, Lynn Blackstone has kept running. Even this winter’s extreme cold and heavy snow didn’t deter her—she just moved her runs to the indoor track at The Armory. She’s inspired by upcoming races on her calendar, including the Mastercard New York Mini 10K on June 6, and by events that bring the community together and showcase achievement, like NYRR Club Night.

“I’m inspired all the time,” she said. “I’m always trying to do better.”

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