1972 was a banner year for American women in athletics, and Patricia Barrett, a high schooler from New Jersey, was at the center of many of the milestones. In January that year, she won her first marathon, the inaugural Jersey Shore Marathon. Then, she was one of the eight women who ran the Boston Marathon that year, the first year female runners could officially enter and receive numbers. That fall, she returned to Central Park for the New York City Marathon, joining Kuscsik and five other women in a 10-minute protest at the start of the race. “I guess I was an activist in a way,” she says. “But I just just loved to [run].”