Ruth Anderson Award

The Ruth Anderson Ultrarunner of the Year Award

Recognizing outstanding athletic achievement in ultra distance running by a female athlete.

Read about Ruth Anderson.

The Ruth Anderson Award, which honors the Female Ultrarunner of the Year, is presented at the USATF Annual Meeting Awards Breakfast in December of each year. To select the recipient of this award, the MUT Running Council compiles the performance highlights of women ultrarunners each year. The performance period for the award is November 1 – October 31 of each year. The voting process is completed by the end of November so that the Ruth Anderson Award can be formally presented to the winning athlete at the USATF Awards Breakfast.

The recipient of the Ruth Anderson Ultrarunner of the Year Award must be a USATF member for the year. To be nominated for the award the athlete MUST have a current USATF membership card.

Qualifications are strictly athletic achievements and should include:

Placing in USATF national championships

Record or outstanding performance in other ultra distance races, (road, trail, track) or sanctioned international events

Overall ultrarunning performance record for the year

About Ruth Anderson
By Dan Brannen and Theresa Daus-Weber, December 2002

Ruth Anderson pioneered women's ultrarunning in the 1970s, a time when virtually no American women practiced the sport. She established numerous American ultradistance women's records, and in doing so became an inspiration for the first generation of American ultra women, who led the world ultra rankings well into the 1980s. Anderson, born in 1929, is the namesake for the Ruth Anderson 50k/50m/100k held in San Francisco each April since 1993.

She became active in the national federation's fledgling distance running committees. In 1986 she was a founding member of the first Ultrarunning Subcommittee of USA Track & Field. Anderson continues today as a USATF committee member and volunteer for long distance running in general, and ultrarunning in particular. For her pioneering accomplishments in the sport and her performances, Anderson was the inducted into the USATF Masters Hall of Fame in the initial class in 1996 and is one of four ultrarunners in the hall.

Ruth Anderson’s Running Highlights

Year	Event	Performance
1976	50K USATF Pacific Association/AAU Road Championship	4:17:53
1978	100M Woodside Track	16:50:47, 100K split 9:57:30
1979	London-Brighton 54.2 Miles	7:46:16, 1st official entrant, 3rd woman
1980	50M Houston Nationals	7:10:58 1st woman
1983	Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run	28:11
1986	Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run	28:56:05
1984	USATF 50K Trail National Championship	5:26:32 1^st masters woman
1986	24-Hour Santa Rosa	110.25 miles age-group record, including record splits at various distances
1987	Track 12-Hour (split in a 24-Hour event)	63.1 miles in 11:42:37
1988	Edmund Fitzgerald 100K	11:56:23 1st MW
1996	Sunmart Texas Trail 50K USATF National Championships	6:47:57
1999	Sunmart Texas Trail 50K USATF National Championships	7:45 1st W70

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Last updated: 09/14/05
Web Author: Lorraine Gersitz