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A majority of those running athletic institutions at the time believed that it would be physiologically dangerous for a woman to run a marathon. They were literally banned from events for that reason. It's not weakmanning to point to the institutional position of the time, it's rather odd to pretend that "everyone" knew women could run marathons except all the people involved in marathon running.
It is physiologically dangerous for a woman to run a marathon, because it is for anyone, and, more importantly, it's more physiologically dangerous for a woman than for a man, for whatever it means when we make sweeping general statements comparing women and men, due to how the physical act of running a marathon is influenced by and influences one's physiology. I have no information by which to determine if this "uterus might fall out" characterization is weakmanning or just accurate, but certainly there's a large gap between "women ought to be banned because their uteri might fall out" and "women ought to be banned because the threshold we have for acceptable risk is crossed by females trying to run a marathon, even though it isn't crossed by males." Even if the latter is also pretty ridiculous by most standards that modern people find reasonable.
That statement is even more true of senior athletes, but we generally don't have ethical qualms in allowing them to race. The oldest Boston finisher this year was 84.
That's because we don't care about some 84 old man. If he dies, he dies
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Long distance running really is hard on women’s health though. Not in ways present society cares about, but in ways the fifties did.
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