Fifty years ago, Bobbi Gibb applied to run the Boston Marathon and was informed that, “Women are not physiologically able to run a marathon.” So she decided to enter anonymously and ended up being the first woman to finish it. “In those days, if you were a woman and you were lucky enough to go to college [Gibb attended Tufts University School of Special Studies], you were expected to get engaged your senior year and then get married. There was no way for women to support themselves economically. Women couldn’t own a house; they couldn’t get a mortgage; they couldn’t get a credit card… I wanted to be married and have children — but that’s not all. I wanted to use my mind and my body. Part of what I was doing with running was getting away from all of that, finding a kind of freedom I didn’t have in society. I knew I wasn’t going to change, so the world had to change.”
