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.

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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.

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

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

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I always say that talent and capability is everywhere, all it needs is opportunity.

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

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When I forgave Jock Semple on Heartbreak Hill, I also got really cross with women. I couldn't understand why they didn't get it, why they didn't know that running was so cool and why they weren't in the race as well. Then I thought to myself "How stupid can you be? You've had so much encouragement and motivation and these women haven't."

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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.

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I could feel my anger dissipating as the miles went by--you can't run and stay mad!

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Life is for participating, not for spectating.

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