At the finish line of the 1967 Boston Marathon, one crabby journalist said it was just a one-off deal and women weren't going to run. Only a 20-year-old who had just run a marathon and was shot full of endorphin would say this but I said that there's going to come a day in our lives when women's running is as popular and as men's.

All you need is the courage to believe in yourself and put one foot in front of the other.

A lack of forgiveness is a waste of time and it's very enriching to forgive and move on but those are things that come with time.

I married the right guy later in life. Roger Robinson is just so wonderful but I was 40 and by that time he had been married and had his family. I realized how dangerous children could truly be. So I feel maternal when I see those women run.

When I go to the Boston Marathon now, I have wet shoulders—women fall into my arms crying. They're weeping for joy because running has changed their lives. They feel they can do anything.

Women is out because she's getting in her daily dose of empowerment, freedom and fearlessness. She has put on her freedom wings for 20 minutes or two hours. That's going to make her whole day right and her whole future hold up and seem entirely possible. The sense of her not having any limits, or any restrictions, to me, is so liberating. She doesn't have to prove anything.

Women were afraid and they would never even imagine running a marathon in 1967.