The Runner in Red: A Search for the First Woman to run a Marathon in America

BASED ON A REAL LIFE BOSTON MARATHON LEGENDThere has been a long-standing belief that a woman slipped into the 1951 Boston Marathon undetected and ran the race. If that could be proven it would make her the first woman to have run a marathon on American soil. She wore “red,” as claimed by a group of Canadian runners who say they tried to bring the matter to the attention of race Director Jock Semple and other race officials. But to no avail, their story was never corroborated, and so today the “Runner in Red” remains a mystery and an urban legend.A period piece set against the backdrop of the 2000 Boston Marathon, the Millennial marathon, this fictional mystery novel is also a love story, family drama and uplifting tale of the human spirit that explores the history of women’s running in page-turning fashion.

Tom Murphy-a life-long runner,-taught in Boston schools where he quickly fell in with the road running crowd. With John J. Kelley, the 1957 Boston Marathon winner, Tom wrote Just Call Me Jock in 1982, a history of the Boston Marathon as seen through the eyes of Jock Semple, the colorful race co-director. Tom's novel, Runner in Red, draws on a real-life Boston Marathon legend that a woman "wearing red" jumped into the 1951 Boston Marathon, which if true would make her the first woman to have run a marathon on American soil. Tom's novel is a fictional search for the 'runner in red' to solve the mystery. In 2006, Tom wrote a book about the aviation heroes on 9/11, called Reclaiming the Sky, which led the president of Fordham University to invite Tom to create the Human Resiliency Institute at Fordham to put healing lessons from the book into programs. The institute's lead program, Edge4Vets, teaches vets how to tap their strengths to get jobs. See more at edge4vets.org. Tom also created a beer, called Barb's Beer, to raise funds to help cure lung cancer in his late wife (a Boston Marathon runner's) name. See more at barbsbeer.org. In 2021 Tom published The Anniversary Box, a love story.