If you feel positive, you have a sense of hope. If you have hope, you can have courage.

A picture, of Jock Semple kissed me,appeared in The New York Times the next day after Boston Marathon in 1973, and the caption was "The end of an era."

There is an expression among even the most advanced runners that getting your shoes on is the hardest part of any workout

When I got the women's marathon into the Olympics and we had races all over the world I thought, 'That's great, now we're heading towards total equality.' Then you see that there are women who are still not allowed to drive, get an education, or travel unless they have a male companion or can't carry their passport. There are those who are mired with incredible poverty in North Africa, the mid-east, South East Asia and there's a ridiculous amount of human trafficking.

1967 race in Boston changed not just my life, but millions of women's lives. There are also things that, when you get older, resonate more.

Jock Semple and I began appearing at speeches together and he came up to me on the start line in 1973 and planted a big kiss on my cheek. He said in his Scottish brogue: "Come on lass, let's get a wee bit of notoriety." He never said he was sorry but that was his way of saying it, I'm sure.

Five years after Boston 1967, I went to the Munich Olympics. I realized that major sponsorship could help me create the opportunity. I wrote a big proposal to Avon cosmetics on how creating a global series of women's races could lead to getting women in the Olympic marathon. People thought I was smoking poppy at the time. The longest event in the Olympic Games was 800m.