On Thanksgiving Day 1961, at 19 years old, Julia Chase-Brand turned heads when she defied the orders of the Amateur Athletic Union and entered and completed the historic Manchester Road Race. Her participation in the widely followed event opened the door for women’s cross-country later that spring and in turn a great number of other changes allowing women to run distance events. Julia faced discrimination from both men and women. Among many things, she was told she’d risk her fertility and ruin her beauty if she ran distance events. But Julia pressed on. She competed in distance running at the elite level for six years and then went on to challenge academic gender norms by pursuing a graduate degree in science where she studied bats and orangutans. Twenty years later, she challenged age norms by completing a medical degree in psychiatry at the age of 53.