Posted inColoradans, News, Outdoors

Pikes Peak Marathon legend Arlene Pieper Stine, the first woman to run a sanctioned marathon, has died

One of Colorado mountain running’s most beloved heroes used to climb up the ladder next to the sign draped across the town of Manitou Springs’s main drag — “Welcome, Pikes Peak Runners” — so that she could send off the hundreds of runners who had packed the narrow street to head off for the summit […]

Posted inColoradans, Outdoors

60 years ago, the first woman to complete a U.S. marathon ran to the top of Pikes Peak and back down again

In white shorts, sleeveless blouse and dime-store tennis shoes, Arlene Pieper Stine, 29, stood on the start line of the 1959 Pikes Peak Marathon looking more like Marilyn Monroe than a mountaineer. But Pieper Stine, then a Colorado Springs health club owner, not only finished the 26-mile race, with its grueling 8,000 feet of vertical […]