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Meet the Retirees Running Marathons Around the World
30.03.2024 - 12:25 / cntraveler.com
This is part of a collection of stories celebrating the many shapes retirement travel can take. Read more here.
The 2022 New York City Marathon was unseasonably warm. Temperatures were as high as 74 degrees, and runners were doing their best to keep putting one foot in front of the other. To distract herself, Ann Heaslett, now 60, started reading the backs of other racers’ T-shirts. She noticed a list of six cities kept coming up, with check boxes next to each. At the time, she was unfamiliar with the concept of the Abbott World Majors—a challenge to run six of the world's most iconic marathons—and little did she know, she was already halfway through the feat.
Heaslett is now one of many determined runners aiming to complete the Berlin, Boston, Chicago, London, New York City, and Tokyo marathon courses. And she's part of a growing field of runners who are doing so at an unexpected age. From 2015 to 2022, the number of participants aged 55-65 running with Running USA, a nonprofit that works to grow and engage the running community, increased from 10.8% to 16%, while runners in the 65+ category increased from 2.6% to 9%, according to data collected by the organization. Races like the New York City Marathon have seen growth in older age categories, too—in 2013, 20.6% of runners were 50+; in 2023, 24.4% were, Carole Harsch, the New York Road Runners’ publicist, says. The Boston Marathon has seen a consistent increase in entrants ages 65+ since 2019, too.
When retirement rolls around, these runners are given the chance to lean even deeper into the sport—and fully enjoy the benefits of traveling, and connection, that it can offer.
“This is my social outlet,” says Rainer Schochat, 68, and a former math professor. "This is where I meet up with people.” He started running at 59 after seeing a sign outside a running store for a Craft Beer 5K in Oak Park, Illinois. At the time, he didn’t know what race staff meant when they asked for his “expected pace” (aka, how quickly he expected to finish); about a decade later, he’s completed all six Abbott Majors—and his newest goal is to complete them again, in one calendar year, to celebrate his 70th birthday.
Ruthie Maldonado-Delwiche, who retired in 2017 and lives in Chicago, has completed 3 of the 6 Abbott World Marathon Majors. She started running in 1982 while preparing for the Air Force, and while stationed in Hawaii, she ran several 5ks, and a 10k here or there.
“The real running started in 2012,” Maldonado-Delwiche says. “It took on a whole new meaning, because it became like therapy for me.” At the time, work stress led her to tackle longer distances; in 2013, at age 55, she completed her first half marathon. The next year, her husband was diagnosed with
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