92-year-old woman is world’s oldest female marathoner
What do you think you’d be doing when you are 92 years old? Well, this grandmother is still running – marathons to be exact!
Harriette Thompson has just become the oldest woman in the world to complete a marathon, and yes, all 42 kilometres of it. Lipstick in place, she finished the race – the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon in San Diego on Sunday 31 May – in a respectable seven hours, 24 minutes and 36 seconds. 
Thompson has always liked to stay fit and decided to participate in her first marathon at age 76. Although she did have some doubts about the San Diego marathon, she has not ruled out competing again. She said,
“I always write to my friends and I say ‘I think this is my last year’, and then I do another one, so this is my 16th and I’m real pleased that I could get through it.”
A mother of five, Thompson runs to raise money for the Leukaemia and Lymphoma Society. Along the way, she has raised over $100,000. Herself a two-time cancer survivor, she has lost friends and family to this disease, including her husband of 67 years. As she puts it,
“That makes it personal, something that I really feel is important.”
Both leukaemia and lymphoma are forms of cancer. While Leukaemia is a group of cancers that usually begin in the bone marrow, lymphoma applies to a group of cancerous blood cell tumours that develop from the lymphatic cells.
Thompson broke the record set by Gladys Burrill, who was 92 years, 19 days old when she ran the Honolulu Marathon in 2010. Thompson is 92 years, 93 days old.
Keep running, Harriette. The oldest runner recognised by the Guinness World Records was Dimitrion Yordanidis, a Greek who ran a marathon in Athens in 1976 at age 98.
Fancy practicing for a marathon, anyone?
(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons and Pixabay under Creative Commons licence)
