Meet the Oldest Woman to Finish a Marathon
Harriette Thompson lives in a Charlotte, North Carolina retirement home. A classically trained pianist with three Carnegie Hall performances under her belt, Thompson is also a cancer survivor, having fought off both jaw and skin cancer. To boot, Thompson has raised over $90,000 for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. How?
Photo Credit | Harris/Getty Images | by Jerod
Because Harriette Thompson runs marathons. Actually, Harriette Thompson didn’t even start running marathons until she was 76 years-old.
“I started running because I had friends who were very ill from leukemia,” Thompson said in 2014. “A friend of mine was gathering money for the race, and she was going to run for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I decided, well, I could walk that. So I signed up, and I came out here in 1999 and ran my first marathon.”
Thompson has run 16 San Diego Marathons, with each race being about 26.2 miles long. Last year, at age 91, Thompson became the record-holder for fastest time in the women’s 90-94 age group by clocking in a finish time of 7:07:42. This past spring, Thompson became the oldest woman to finish a marathon with a time of 7:24:36. Aged 92 years and 65 days, Thompson beat out previous record holder Gladys Burrill, who completed the 2010 Honolulu Marathon when she was 92 years and 19 days-old.
But it wasn’t exactly easy. During her training for this year’s marathon, Thompson suffered through a staph infection in her leg and the loss of her husband five months prior to the race.
“I couldn’t train very well because my husband was very ill and I had to be with him for some time and then when he died in January I had some treatments on my leg,” Thompson told ESPN. “I was just really thrilled that I could finish today.”
How does she do it? Well, that’s where her training as a classically trained pianist comes into play – throughout the race, Thompson said she plays old piano compositions over and over in her head.
“I don’t consider myself special,” Thompson told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “It’s just that I’m 92. All you have to do is get to 90 and you get all sorts of attention.”