![]() ![]() ![]() Making matters trickier, both legs had frozen up on him. If he ran the course in less than 5 hours, he would automatically qualify to run the Boston again this year.Īt mile 20 he saw that he had only one hour left to do the final 6 miles and make the cut-off. George wasn’t so much interested in beating the other three as he was beating the clock. ![]() He did that by running a 4:40 marathon in the 80-plus age group.Īt the starting line, he was one of only four 80-plus runners. George has fists full of first place medals in his age group for marathons he ran in Long Beach, Huntington Beach, Los Angeles and Catalina.Īnd last year he ran the Boston Marathon, the holy grail of marathons since you have to qualify for it. I’m very happy,” he told me, reaching into a shoe box to pull out some of his hardware. ![]() And the one after that in 4 hours, 3 minutes, his fastest time ever. The one after that in 4 hours, 12 minutes. George’s time was 4 hours, 33 minutes.įired up, he ran his next marathon in 4 hours, 18 minutes. And darn it if the talk show queen didn’t beat George to the finish line by 4 minutes. It was 1996, shortly after Oprah ran her first marathon. That was back when it was called the Pacific Shoreline Marathon. Things like yard work.īut while George refers to his wife as “the boss,” he will nevertheless, like countless husbands throughout the land, ignore his wife’s plea to do yard work, in his case, run the Surf City Marathon in Huntington Beach on Sunday instead.īut how could he not? It was the first marathon he ever ran. “There are things to do around the house and every day he’s out running,” she says. In fact, his wife wants him to quit running races altogether. “You’re not a normal person, I don’t think.”Īnd that goes double if you’re running 26.2 miles at the age of 81, like George. Just the mere mention of this development has George’s wife Terri, who is sitting in a chair next to him for this interview, shaking her head. When George told him 75 miles, the fella, whose name is Tom, convinced him it was time to sign up to run his hometown marathon in Huntington Beach. By the time he was 66, and a trim 146 pounds, “a fella” who he met pounding the pavement along Pacific Coast Highway asked him how many miles he put in a week. ![]()
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