A Sisterhood of Runners
Athleticism is almost besides the point
Susan Hill Pajer, standing, with her group of mentors who help newcomers to running.

By Jennifer Lin
and Susan Warner

We lace up our running shoes and head out the door of our Center City office for a three-mile jaunt w Kelly Drive. It will leave us gasping, red-faced-and content.
Our lives are frantic. We race to work every morning after getting kids off to school -- then rush home in the evening to shuttle them to ballet, soccer, Girl Scouts, basketball, guitar, confirmation class, Hebrew school. We have dinners to cook, old houses to mend, and laundry by the bale to wash.
Why run when we're already running around?
Because we must.
We run to escape, to relax, to hammer out life's problems to the beat of rubber soles on pavement. It is our therapy, our time to mull questions big and small.
Mile One: What to wear to a 25th high school reunion? What to do about our shrinking 401(k) s?
Mile Two: Why President Bush, not President Gore? Why term insurance, not whole life?
Mile Three: How to keep baby-sitters happy? How to bring peace to Kashmir?
We dissect our lives --- starting with husbands and kids and working our way to the Rosetta Stone of our beings: our mothers
We torture ourselves for the greater good of our health, and reason that we are entitled to indulge in a good gab along the way. And across those miles, our running has brought friendship, the kind you don't often find after college -- after your career takes off, you begin a family, and you get too busy for the simple pleasure of visiting with a friend.
Running now is as vital to our lives as chocolate and red wine.
We are part of a sisterhood of runners.
Women are out in force --jogging in pairs, in groups, in clubs, not necessarily athletic or inspiring, but nevertheless running, running, running. We are 11 million strong, 25 percent more than five years ago.
Just take a look around.

On a summer evening at Doylestown Township's Central Park in Bucks County, a large crowd of women gathers under the picnic pavilion like believers come to hear the preacher at a revival meeting.
They encircle Susan Hill Pajer, 44, a pert mother of four boys ages 6 to 21, who spreads the gospel of running. In shorts and a tank top, her blond hair Pulled high in a ponytail, she has taut legs with nary a cellulite pockmark.
Pajer welcomes the women, whose ages fall somewhere between post-college and pre-Social Security. Many wear running shoes that look fresh out of the box. Few could be mistaken for serious athletes.
Pajer started running "when I realized I could not eat everything I wanted to eat." That is, soon after college. Her hobby became her business when she opened a local running store in 1990 -- Training Zone Sports -- with her husband, David. Five years ago, her first clinic to start women running attracted 25; this summer, there are almost 100.
The women tonight have no delusions of racing stardom. Few will be able to circle the half-mile track. But Pajer's goal is to have them ready to run a 5K race -- 3.1 miles -- in October.
"There's a sense of freedom and strength that comes with running," Pajer said before the clinic. "You see yourself as fit and strong. It's a becoming image to aspire to."
Judging from experience, Pajer assumes that about half the women who sign up for her classes are wrestling with a transition in their lives -- divorce, empty nests, death, illness, menopause. They turn to running, she says, to escape and heal.
On this first night of the clinic, Pajer introduces all the women to a team of mentors who will coax them along.
There's Gerrie Sommers, 49, a mother of two with one in college, who started running five years ago and recently ran her first marathon. Sommers gives a shy wave as the crowd, impressed, responds with applause and bursts of "Way to go!"
Next up is the mother-daughter team of Linda and Renee Gunning. Renee, 20, was a two-time high school state champion in the mile. Linda, 47, started running to spend more time with Renee.
More applause.
Then there's the mother-daughter team of Pam and Shelby Daugherty. Shelby, 18 months, sleeps in a running stroller that Pam, 32, will push around the track. A runner for 20 years, Pam logged eight miles the day before she delivered Shelby.
Applause, applause.
And there's Ceil DiGuglielmo, 42, a nonathlete and proud of it, who is so hooked that she ran a running clinic for school-age kids last spring.
By now, the crowd is pumped and anxious with the thought, If they can do it ....
With a tweet of her whistle, Susan waves on the women for a mix of walking and light running, "Let's go, girls!"

Eighteen-month-old Shelby Daugherty sits with her mother, Pam, after a workout

At Runner's World magazine in Emmaus Pa., the oracle of runners, editors braced for a boom in women's running after Joan Benoit Samuelson won the 1984 Olympic marathon.
But there was barely a ripple.
It would take a decade before the trend would really pick up with another great marathon performance: Oprah Winfrey's much-heralded finish at the 1994 Marine Corps Marathon in Washington.
"Women said: 'Oprah did it; so can I,'" said Claudia Malley, publisher of the monthly magazine. "That was really the turning point"
The number of women entering road races -- a window onto the trend -- is sharply rising. In a decade, the female field in the 10-mile Broad Street Run, held each May, has tripled. For the Philadelphia Distance Run, a half-marathon of 13 miles, it has doubled. Women now account for about 40 percent of the runners in the 25-year-old race, scheduled this year for Sept. 15.
For hard-core runners who got their start during the running craze of the 1970s, the newcomers are a little hard to take. How can Oprah, a talk-show host of fluctuating weight, hold a Nike to someone like Jim Fixx, author, marathon man, and guru for the first generation of runners?
Making matters worse, these converts -- some men, but mostly women -- are changing the very character of the sport. Fading is the image of the lean, lone, long-distance runner. New recruits see running more as a social activity, where even a plodding pace merits a Girl Scout merit badge.
If this is the future of the sport, so be it, said Amby Burfoot, a one-time winner of the Boston Marathon and executive editor of Runner's World.
Thirty years ago, people like me were renegades. We were into the loneliness of the long-distance runner," he said. "That was completely wrong. You're much better off running socially. It makes you more dedicated. It makes it more fun. It makes a lot more sense."
Running today -- for both sexes -- is less about speed and endurance than fitness and fun, Malley said.
"In the '70s we saw the first big swing .... It was really about a lot of miles -- 120-mile weeks," Malley said. "People burned out. It was too much. Running is a kinder, gentler activity now."
Malley said today's runners like to train in pairs, run as teams, even plan entire family vacations around marathon festivals in the United States and overseas.
"It's not just physical. It's mental," Malley said. "It's about women -- and men -- coming together three or four times a week and using those 40 minutes to chitchat. Who has time to chitchat?"
There are other reasons why women, in particular, are turning in greater numbers to running. The advent of the "disease race circuit" -- short races and marathons to raise money for causes ranging from cancer to leukemia research -- helps lure more first-time competitors. The idea appeals to the nurturing side of women: They're running to help others.
This year, the biggest circuit -- the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation "Race for the Cure" -- will sponsor 112 races across the country with 1.4 million participants, up from 53,000 participants in races in 1991.
Another factor accounting for the boom is all the Title IX babies -- women in their 20s and 30s who had the full benefit of a 1972 federal law requiring equality in school athletic programs. Now locked in office jobs and facing flab, these women are turning to running.
"In a time-pressed world, running is practical," Malley said. "Golf is not realistic. Skiing three days a week is not realistic."
Many women start running to control their weight, but once hooked, the kinder-gentler appeal gives way to the competitive urge. First comes the charity 5K walk, then the 10K run, and all of a sudden a marathon seems possible.
"Men tend to take off too fast and then they get hurt," Burfoot said. "Women take out a training schedule, they stick to it, and they succeed."

The editors at Runner's World have women like Janice Ciarelli, 29, and her friends in mind when they talk about the boom.
Ciarelli teaches kindergarten at Stony Creek Elementary School in Blue Bell, Montgomery County. She has curly hair and the type of soft, youthful face that 5-year-olds would find comforting.
Last winter she sent an e-mail to teaching friends:
Does anyone else feel blah? Want to get in shape together? Can anyone help me out?
Yes, came the answer from Maria Banks, 49, a third grade teacher at Stony Creek and a mother of two daughters, 22 and 12, whose college running skills were dormant. Yes, chimed in Sue Decembria, 27, a first-grade teacher at Stony Creek, and her friend, Becki Wendler, 25, a physical education teacher at Wissahickon Middle School. Decembrino and Wendler are seasoned runners training for this fall's Philadelphia marathon.
"We all jumped on,"said Decembrino, who bought Ciarelli her first pair of running socks. "It's fun to help," Wendler added. "It gives you a good feeling to make someone feel good about running."
Once a week, Decembrino took her training down a notch to work with Ciarelli. They would loop around the middle school track, with Decembrino rambling on about her new house or her work to keep Ciarelli's mind off her pain.
By her own admission, Ciarelli was never what you would call an athletic kid. "Never," she said firmly. "I never even took a gym class in school."
Ciarelli wanted to set a fitness goal. Banks, too, wanted to improve her health. Not a wrinkle mars her dark skin. But she has seen too many overweight relatives succumb to diabetes and heart disease. "I don't want to do that," Banks said. "It's important that I do this for me."
To get started, Ciarelli enrolled in a weekly running clinic at the YMCA in Ambler. She passed on to Banks what she learned. Together, they learned how to pace themselves, how to stretch, even how to breathe -- in through the nose, out through the mouth.
They started walking and running a little. Then running and walking a little. One mile of jogging became two until finally they were ready: a 5K race last May in Ambler.
Decembrino and Wendler, who finished the road race well in front of the others, cheered them on, coaxing Ciarelli to the finish line with, "Give me a J -- J! Give me an A -- Al"
"Guys would never do that," said Ciarelli, amused by the thought.
But for the Stony Creek crew -- who call themselves "Team Hill No" because of Banks' aversion to inclines -- the camaraderie of running makes up for the sore muscles and fatigue.
"This is the most challenging thing I've ever done, Ciarelli said. "I'm doing it, I'm motivated and I feel better."
The women had big plans for a summer of road races, competing in a 5K in Chalfont, Bucks County, last June. Instead of treating one another to lunch, they decided to take turns covering race fees.
But a week after the Chalfont race, a setback: Ciarelli tore a ligament in her ankle while walking on the sidewalk. Her foot caught a corner of the curb and she crumpled to the ground. Her surgeon said it was possible that her ankles may have been weakened from running, but he held off on surgery.
Spending a summer on hold, instead of improving her speed, was depressing. "It completely gets me down," Ciarelli said, "because I was really beginning to see such progress. I was thinking in terms of actually 'being a runner.'"
Come fall, she plans to pick up where she left off, praying that her feet play along.
Already, she is talking to the others about races and training plans.

"Runners, on your mark ..."
A horn blares, and after a few energetic steps, we settle into our l0-minute-a-mile pace in this five-mile race. Runner's World calls racers like US "waddlers."
It's a sticky July morning on a beachfront avenue in Avalon, N.J. Within minutes, almost everyone has passed us by. A pair of women slog away a block behind us, and a sweaty, older man is in front, but the leaders already are racing for the finish by the time we hit the halfway point.
We're unfazed. As we plod along, we free-associate. We critique Shore architecture. We gossip about work. We lament racism. We review home improvement plans. We take a vow in this post-Sept 11 world to live every day as if it were our last.
One of us is tall with bum knees. The other, short with bad arches. Our goal today, like every race day, is to finish with dignity. For one of us, that means without barfing at the finish line like last year; for the other, it's maintaining an even 10-minute pace to the second.
As we head for the home stretch, we over take the sweaty guy in front. We pass another man with braces on both knees. But as we pass the finish line, the cheering crowds have packed up and gone.
They post our times in the community center. We placed 95th and 96th in a field of 101 -- although technically we tied.
Embarrassed? Not us. We finished.

Jennifer Lin (jlin@phillynews.com) is an Inquirer staff writer. Susan Warner is a freelance writer based in haddonfield.