What Should I Do with the Rest of My Life_ - Bruce Frankel [12]
Margie is quietly proud of her growing list of accomplishments, including the highlight of taking four gold medals at the 2007 National Senior Games in Louisville, in the 800-meter, 1,500-meter, 5K, and 10K events. But she vigilantly guards against overstating her prowess and is quick to emphasize that the fastest woman distance runner over sixty-five is Marie-Louise Michelsohn, a mathematics professor at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and a leading authority in the field of complex geometry.
Michelsohn has been setting American age-group and world age-group records ever since she took up running in 1995, at fifty-three. She began running after her daughter suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage at the age of twenty-four. “The rehab process was arduous and frightening both to her and to me,” Michelsohn told Running Times writer Mike Tymn. Running was suggested as a way to control the stress. She began running a mile a day and gradually built up her distance. Three weeks after her first run, Michelsohn entered a five-mile race. “I did it, I loved it, took third in my age group, and was hooked.” Her running steadily improved in her sixties, an accomplishment she dismissed in an e-mail, writing tersely: “Challenges are invigorating.” She ran her fastest 5K on a track a month before she turned sixty-four and her fastest 800m a few days later. On May 24, 2009, at sixty-seven, she broke the American age-group record for the 10K by two minutes when she was clocked at 44:47:58 during the USATF Pacific Association Open in San Mateo, California. That added to the seventeen American records she already held in the 60-64 and 65-69 age groups and the eight world records she holds in the 60-64 age group. “Marie-Louise is in a class by herself,” Margie said. “Her records will stand for a long time.”
Margie calls running “a greedy sport,” meaning that her ego and health may benefit from it, but she cannot quite see how her running benefits anyone else. Still, she has regularly volunteered as a runner to help others gain self-esteem, lose weight, and acquire good habits. “I don’t think she is aware of the impact she has on other people,” said Dianna Bribeau, a reading specialist and Nashville distance runner. “She is always encouraging and cheering others on,” including, Bribeau said, mostly overweight women who joined walking groups to work toward becoming runners. Margie was among the first and most consistent volunteer leaders. Margie has also mentored preteen girls in the local chapter of Girls On the Run, an international nonprofit prevention program that encourages girls to develop self-respect and healthy lifestyles through running.
In the program’s crowning event the girls run a 5K. During training for it, Margie says there is often more chatter than she would prefer. “They talk about everything: their pets, what happened in school, their vacations. I sometimes begin to think that they must not have enough opportunity to talk at home. Sometimes, I have even suggested that we be quiet for a certain distance. Of course, maybe they are the normal ones and I am abnormal in not liking to talk.”
Before they run in their 5K race, Margie instructs “her” girls to tie their laces, take a deep breath, and have fun. When others start off too quickly and pass them, Margie says, “Don’t worry about them. If they want to walk, I suggest slowing down instead. I’m a purist. A runner does not walk,” she said. “Near the final one hundred meters, I always tell the girls to give it all they’ve got. For me, that last one hundred meters is what the whole program is about. I’m not sure that the fun and games they are asked to play to get them to think positively about themselves will stick with them, but the effort of those last one hundred meters will—especially