It is at the end of our interview that women's running heroine Kathrine Switzer says something that profoundly links to her famous historic moment in the 1967 Boston Marathon.

I had just asked her what running has brought to her life after taking it up as a teenager in the early 1960s.

"Running has been the hub of my life," she replied. "It has been my religion. It has brought me so many things - my travelling and eventually the love of my life my husband. And it has given me my ability to have a sense of vision and creativity; my whole sense of confidence.

"And it is so important because women have been transformed by it. Running is a great stress buster."

A stress buster. Rewind 41 years to April 1967 and we find a 19-year-old Switzer taking part in the world's most prestigious marathon - the Boston Marathon. She had registered as an official entrant, albeit giving her name as simply K. Switzer.

No women were allowed to race the marathon distance - it was considered impossible and dangerous, even though Roberta Gibb had unofficially completed the Boston course the previous year.

Switzer took the debate to a new level when she managed to get an official race number by entering under her initial rather than full name. She was spotted a few miles into the race and an irate co-race director called Jock Semple tried to physically pull her out of the race, only to be bundled off the course himself by Switzer's then boyfriend, who happened to be a track and field hammer thrower, and her running companion Arnie Briggs.

That momentary clash was captured in black and white newspaper photographs that have since gained iconic status in the history of the sport, and particularly the advent of women's distance running.

It was the beginning of the end of unfair barriers that had prevented women from competing in a running event beyond one-and-a-half miles.

But for Switzer the unnerving encounter had occurred only a few miles into the marathon, and she had more than 20 more miles to go.

"He tackled me at about two miles, so I had another 24 miles to think about it. But you can't stay mad when you are running. By the time I reached the finish I felt light and good and one of the things I knew I wanted to be was to become a better athlete."

Switzer had purposely slowed down because she knew she had to finish, to prove that a woman could run the distance. It took her four hours and twenty minutes, way slower than her eventual best of 2.51.

"The other thing I wanted to do was create opportunities for women. I had started the race as a cocky kid, but when I finished I felt lucky that I would be able to create opportunities for women."

Despite playing everything by the book to enter the Boston Marathon as an official racer, Switzer faced the wrath of the mighty American Athletics Union and was expelled from the organisation. She was also disqualified from the race.

"They said I had made a fraudulent entry by signing as K. Switzer. I had broken the rule that no women was allowed to run more than a mile-and-a-half. I had run with men, and fourthly I had run without a chaperone."

There had been a foreshadowing of the Boston controversy a year or two earlier when Switzer had been at college and accepted an invitation to run for the men's track team to help the depleted team score points.

She ran in the men's mile race and found herself centre stage with half the small southern town backing her and the other half expressing scandalisation.

"The men on the team loved it because so many people came along to watch the track meet. It had been reported in the local newspaper and that brought the New York Tribune and CBS News down because they had heard this woman was in the men's team and I think I was the first time it had happened."

She survived that brush with controversy, but after switching to Syracuse University she hooked up with the campus cross country team whom she was allowed to train with and eventually found herself out running in a blizzard with veteran runner Arnie Briggs, listening to his endless tales of the Boston Marathon.

Switzer said she would run it, Briggs expressed his own chauvinistic belief - widely held - that no woman could run a marathon because it is physiologically impossible. The showdown in the snow led to Briggs challenging Switzer to proving that she could run the distance and he in return would put in her race entry.

The pair ran a 31-mile route (five miles longer than a marathon) and Briggs was convinced. Switzer entered the 1967 Boston race and the stage was set for the notorious encounter with race director Semple and her future determination to promote women's distance running and make the women's marathon an Olympic event.

In 1972 the Boston Marathon removed the bar on women competitors.

Switzer was already busy organising shorter road races for women, and was struggling to find sponsors. But when she attended the Munich Olympics of 1972 as a journalist her eyes were opened to the world of big corporate sponsorship.

"I saw these sponsors names, like Coca-Cola and addidas and there was I going around used-car dealers to get a trophy for a race."

That experience led Switzer to pursue her vision of promoting women's running by seeking corporate links. A chance meeting with an executive of Avon led to the company getting involved in women's running and the start of a series of women-only races that culminated in the Avon Women's Marathons, the 1980 event in London the precursor to the London Marathon which was held the following year.

The push to get the event recognised as an Olympic distance for women, pushed by Switzer and Avon Running, paid off when the inaugural Olympic women's marathon was held in Los Angeles in 1984.

Of all she has achieved, Switzer is most proud about the turnaround in thinking and acceptance that women could and should be allowed to run the full marathon distance, even at the Olympics.

On the long road to winning that right, Switzer ironically encountered more difficulty convincing women that they could do it, than any resistance from male runners.

"In running there are no sexual issues. Everyone is just out there to beat their time and the others. No man gets in a twist because there is a woman running with them."

It is that final victory - the Olympic recognition of women's marathon running - which gives Switzer rates the highest. She said: "That was an amazing accomplishment, getting the women's marathon into the Olympics, that changed things. It was the for me the equivalent of women getting the right to vote."

Switzer remembers running the Bermuda International Race Weekend 10K in 1979 or 1980. This year she will be taking part in the inaugural Bermuda Triangle Challenge by running the KMPG Front Street Mile, 10K and half-marathon over the three days.

She is a guest of Fairmont Bermuda and is helping the company promote fitness amongst its guests.