Words of wisdom: “If you have people around who are telling you that, ‘Oh you’re too old to do this or that,’ get away from them. Age is an attitude. In endurance sports, you get better as you get older.”

The only woman to run the first four Olympic marathons for women, Lorraine Moller was so sickly as a young child growing up in Putaruru, New Zealand, that she remembers doctors telling her mother that she would not survive. “I wasn’t going to let that happen. There were things I wanted to do with my life,” says Moller, who certainly did plenty with her life. Once she recovered from her kidney ailments, she began running barefoot with her father Gordon through the pine forests of her hometown. By the time she was 14, she won her first national title—still running barefoot. Eventually, she made a career choice to follow her heart and devote herself to running which took her from the grass tracks of New Zealand to the bronze medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Along the way, she also became one of the leaders in ending the amateur hypocrisy in running, as well as one of the pioneers in women’s marathoning, and helped to get the women’s marathon added to the Olympics in 1984. One of Moller’s greatest causes has been running, promoting, and writing about the Phnom Penh Marathon in Cambodia which was ravaged by years of genocide. Moller has long believed in the mind-body connection and one of her strongest attributes was her mental preparation. Now 51, Moller lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband, Harlan Smith, and their daughter. She continues to coach and inspire runners of all levels.