First Woman To Finish Boston Marathon Knew She Changed Running Forever

BOSTON (CBS) - This year's Boston Marathon is honoring a pioneer. In 1966, when the race was strictly for men, Bobbi Gibb changed running forever.

"I love this race. I fell in love with this race in 1964. I'm still in love with this race," Gibb says.

Bobbi Gibb was just 23 years old when she applied to run the Boston Marathon in 1966.

"I got this letter from race director Will Cloney saying women are not physiologically able to run a marathon," Gibb recalls. "I was running 40 miles at a stretch. I read this and go what?! It's a catch-22 – how can you prove you can do something you're not allowed to do?"

Bobbi refused to be denied just because she was a woman. She convinced her mother to drive her to Hopkinton on that Patriots Day. She hid in the bushes, waiting for her chance to jump into the race. She wore her brother's shorts and a sweatshirt, hoping not to attract attention.

"Very quickly the men behind me realized there was a woman; it was the moment of truth."

Her fear of a hostile reception on the course quickly disappeared.

"We won't let them throw you out, they said. They were protective. They were my friends, my brothers."

Bobbi finished ahead of two-thirds of the men running that day, with an unofficial time of 3:21:40, and made headlines around the world.

"I realized things would never go back," she said. "It was a pivotal moment, and would change the way we think about women forever."

That was the first of three straight Boston Marathons for Gibb. Since then, she's attended medical school, practiced law, and raised her son as a single mom.

Her focus now is painting and sculpture. Just as she was driven to run the Marathon 50 years ago, her goal now is to create a life size sculpture of a female runner to be installed on the course.

"I know how she feels from the inside. The muscles, the sense of life, the sense of action. I try to capture the life and motion and spirit of this woman."

Lisa Hughes asked Bobbi what it would mean to have her sculpture on the course.

"It would be great. We don't have any women on the course."

Not in cast iron anyway… not yet.

But thanks in part to Bobbi Gibb, thousands of real women run this Marathon every year.

"They are all my sisters and my daughters. This is the world I envisioned … men and women together… women with all these opportunities."

Gibb will be the Grand Marshal for the 2016 Boston Marathon.

The 26.2 Foundation is leading the effort to fund the Bobbi Gibb Marathon Sculpture Project. For more information visit: http://www.firstgiving.com/5280_1/bobbi-gibb-fundraiser