ABC World News, apparently tipped off by this article in the New York Daily News, ran a feature Sunday night on W95 sprinter Ida Keeling. Great stuff. But of course, what’s not to love about a “4-foot-6, 83-pound bundle of wonder”? She apparently became the oldest female sprinter in world history last week at the New York Armory, when she ran the 60 in 29.86. Not bad for age 95, since the listed W90 American record is 31.20 by Grace Foster. (But Grace also ran a 26.95 at age 91 at a 2009 USATF championships in New Jersey, so there’s another absurd omission in the record books.) In any case, Ida (who shares the first name of my late paternal grandmother) is a superstar now, and well-deserved. No world records exist for W95, indoors or out. Until now. Keep on trucking, great-great Grandma!

Ida and daughter Shelley are the picture of joy. New York Daily News photo.

Ida Keeling took a lot of ribbing when she took up running.

Other runners would say, “‘Oh, gee, my mother’s younger than you, my grandmother’s younger than you,'” Keeling recalls. “I was always the oldest person.”

The other night at a meet in northern Manhattan, there was no question Keeling was the oldest athlete on the track. But that’s not the only reason she stood out. She set a world record, running 60 meters in 29.86 seconds.
No other 95-year-old woman had done that before.

ABC New site archived story and video shown Sunday night across America.

That’s right, 95.

Keeling is a 4-foot-6, 83-pound bundle of wonder, a woman defying the conventions of age. She takes only one prescription drug, and recalls names and dates with the speed of someone half her age.

Active and healthy and living alone in her Bronx, N.Y., apartment, she could pass for 75. She says she feels even younger.

“Like a puppy,” she declares. “I feel younger now than when I was in my 30s and 40s and had all those problems. Then I was aged!”

Over her long life, Keeling has endured the kind of heartbreak and hardship that could grind anyone down.
Her mother passed away when she was a child, and her husband died suddenly of a heart attack when he was just 42. She lost two sons, Charles and Donald, to drug-related killings in 1979 and 1981.

In running, Keeling found a refuge.

Her daughter, Shelley Keeling, who is a lawyer and real estate investor and coaches track and field at a nearby high school, convinced her to go on a “mini-run” when her mother was 67.

Two years later, Ida Keeling ran a 5K race, and she’s been running ever since.

“It felt good, and I felt uplifted. I said, ‘Well, gee, this is for me,”‘ she said.

The medals and trophies crowding the bookshelves in her home document her success on the track.

“This one’s from France, this one — I think is from Georgia,” she said, pointing out each one.

Setting world records is getting to be old hat for Keeling. Three years ago, she set the record for fastest sprint in the 90-and-over age group.

Keeling grew up in Harlem, sharing a bedroom with five siblings in the back of her dad’s grocery store. She raised a family while working, mostly in the garment factories that have long since left New York.

When asked her about the secrets to her good health, Keeling said she eats a light breakfast for dinner and a dinner — say hamburger, or liver or fish — for breakfast.

“Gives me fuel for the day,” she explains.

She uses the long hallway of her apartment building as her practice track. She also rides an exercise bike, lifts weights and — even at 95 — jumps rope.

Then there is her outlook on life.

“My secret is, feel good about yourself [and] have a good attitude about yourself. … Do what you need to do, and not what you want to do, or what you’d like to do,” she said.

“I just close my eyes and say, ‘Count your blessings Ida, count your blessings.’ Stay alert, stay focused, and that’s it. It clears up a whole lot of things. You’d be surprised,” she said.

Keeling said she is not sure how much longer she will run, although she said she hopes to “make it to 108,” which would give her four more years than her father’s mother, who lived until the age of 104.

“Every year I am going to keep doing what I am doing, and when running time comes, if I feel I am ready, I will go at it,” Keeling said.

Here’s the New York Daily News report:

At 20 minutes to 9 in Washington Heights Wednesday night, America’s oldest and most resolute sprinter stood at the start line, 60 meters from her destination. She clasped her hands overhead when she was introduced by the PA man. When the runners were told to get set, she leaned forward and put her right hand on her knee.

The gun sounded, and in Lane 7 Ida Keeling was off, with her yellow shoes and salmon-colored shirt and matching earrings. It was Masters Sprint Night at the The Armory, and nobody was happier to be back on the track than Ida Keeling, who has endured unimaginable loss in her life, and started running because of it.

“I find it a very, very, very enjoyable thing,” she said.

Ida Keeling is a0– from the Bronx, and not like any other 95-year-old you have ever met. She takes one prescription drug. She talks about her childhood in Harlem, being stacked into a bedroom with five siblings behind her father’s grocery store and says, “We were as happy as pups.” You ask her when she was last sick. She smiles.

“I am not a sickly person,” she said.

Ida Keeling is 4-6 and 83 pounds, and does her running on size 51/2 feet. She runs in the hallways of her Riverdale apartment. She runs on treadmills, and lifts weights, and rides an exercise bike and has no idea what she would do without all of it.

“It’s so uplifting,” Keeling said. “Instead of giving these children jail time, they should give them a sentence of exercise. That would wake them up.”

Keeling lost her husband to a heart attack at age 42, in 1958. She lost two sons, Donald and Charles, in gruesome, drug-related homicides, in 1979 and 1981. Her blood pressure went up to 206/106. Some people would never get over such events. Ida Keeling had plenty of dark days, but kept on.

Shelley Keeling is a lawyer and businesswoman, and the track and field coach at the Fieldston School in the Bronx. She is 59 and looks a decade or two younger, like her mother.

“The biggest thing with my mom is that she never lets anything get her down,” Shelley Keeling said. “If somebody said to her, ‘I’m going to put you in a box and you’re never going to get out,’ she’d say, ‘Just you wait.’ ”

After her brothers were killed, Shelley Keeling got her mother to run in a 5K in Brooklyn. Ida Keeling was 67 at the time. She has been running ever since, in short races and long, though mostly in sprints these days.

Three years ago, Ida Keeling set a world record for the 90-and-over age group, running 60 meters in 31.80. The record was later broken, but no matter. Keeling still eats liver or fish, and vegetables, for breakfast, her biggest meal of the day. It is the fuel for her workouts, her health, her personal remedy against the ravages of aging.

“I used to be 4-8, but you shrink as you get older,” Ida Keeling said.

Keeling ran against five other master (40 and over) runners Wednesday night, all of them 30 or more years her junior. Deaneth Edwards, 40, had a winning time of 9.00. When Edwards and the other runners were done, they turned and waited at the finish for Ida Keeling in Lane 7, her yellow shoes going as fast as she could make them go, up and down, a stride more walk than run.

As Keeling approached the finish line, the other sprinters began to clap and so did everybody else at the Armory, competitors in the hurdles and long jump and distance events, and the smattering of fans, including several of Keeling’s six grandchildren and eight great grand-children. Ida Keeling raised her arms again. Her time was 29.86 – a world record in the 95-and-up age group, and when it was announced, another cheer went up, a little more material for the book she is writing about her life.

Ida Keeling made her way off the track, and sat down on a little red platform. She couldn’t find her water bottle. She asked daughter Shelley if she could find it. It was the only glitch in an otherwise perfect winter’s night.

“I feel wonderful,” Ida Keeling said.