It was like telling them women could fly. It was outside their sphere of reality. To change that view, Gibb and other women who joined her kept running. Gibb won the women's race, unofficially, in 1967 and 1968. Finally in 1972, after the AAU changed its rules about women, the BAA let them run with official numbers.
Sports is always a wedge in changing the ways people think.
It opened people up to having women in a public forum. Working as a legislative aide during the day, she spent nights at the New England School of Law. She graduated in 1979 and started a practice in Rockport. Now Gibb lives in Delmar, Calif. where she is pursuing another dream as a sculptor. In her ongoing fight against stereotyping, Gibb wouldn't give her age, but said she first ran the Marathon in her early 20s.