Today’s issue of Runner’s World Daily (the online unit) carries another chat with a masters superstar — this time W70 Mary Harada, Linz medalist and world record holder in the indoor mile. In a typical show of masters modesty and gratitude, she credits her running friend Louise Adams as a role mdoel and supportive friend. And in defiance of the Track & Field News credo that “nobody gives a rat’s ass” about masters track, Runner’s World continues to showcase older champions. Compare RWO’s print circulation to T&FN, and you wonder why the “boyz from Mountain View” (T&FN) continue to diss the geezers. They’re just cutting their own demographic throats. Anyhoo, here’s Jim Ferstle’s Q&A with the brilliant and beautiful Mary:

At the USATF Masters Indoor Champs in Boston in March, Mary Harada was one of several competitors to break existing world marks in their events. The 70-year-old professor and historian ran 7:12.59 to break the world mile mark of 7:19.44, set by American Toshiko D’Elia in 2001. Harada, who lives in West Newbury, MA, won a silver medal in the 1500 at the World Masters Athletics Indoor Championships in Linz, Austria in 6:58.09, along with bronze medals in the 800 and 3000.
Runner’s World Daily: You mentioned that your “role model” is older than you. How did you two get to know one another? What have you learned from her?
Mary Harada: She is Louise Adams, now 84. Louise has been active in masters track for many years, is a member of the Masters Hall of Fame, and holds a number of world records. A week or so ago, she told me she has “only two left.” I believe they are for the W75 (women’s age 75 to 79) indoor 800 and mile.
I met Louise in South Africa at the WAVA meet in 1997. She injured a knee in the cross country race and swore she would not run cross country again. Needless to say, she has run many cross country meets since then, sometimes slogging through the mud and coming in last. Although she hates to come in last, she continues to keep running.
We were with the same travel group, staying in the same hotel, and took a safari tour after the meet. I saw her again in 1999 in Gateshead (England) at the WAVA meet, and in 2001 we shared a triple room with a friend of hers in Brisbane (Australia) at the WAVA meet. Since then we have shared a room in the subsequent WAVA (now WMA) meets and at a number of U.S. masters meets–indoors and outdoors.
I admire her ability to continue to run “through the ages,” keep on going despite the inevitable slowing down that happens to all of us. She had foot surgery this past fall in preparation for the WAVA meet in Italy in September 2007, when she will be in a new age group and can take a crack at the W85 records! We plan to share a hotel room then as well. When I watch Louise run, with her smooth gait, looking as if it is not hard work, but actually she’s working very hard, it is impossible to complain about getting older and slower.
RWD: The standard joke among many of the elder masters runners is that the secret to their successes is merely living long enough. You’re not just going through the motions out there, however; you’re still pushing your limits, setting records. How big a part of your motivation is that or is it just something that happens because you have stayed fit throughout your life?
MH: We do joke that we will outlive our competition, and indeed, when I go to national and international meets these days, the ranks seem too thin. However, when I went to Spain to the WMA meet last September, I was astonished at the size of the W70 group. And many of them are running very well.
At national meets, however, the ranks do thin out, especially for older women, in part because we are the pre-Title IX group and most of us started running later in life.
The training I do is far beyond staying fit. If that is all I cared about, I would be out doing a slow run three or four days a week and stopping at that. Initially, when I started running, my motivation was fitness and sanity. I use to joke that if I did not run, I would be an axe murderer. For the first ten years that I ran, I did not compete in road races, I was not entirely unaware of them, but I was teaching full-time and had two small children.
Running was what I squeezed into my day when they were at day care or school. It was for fitness and for mental relaxation. I was not a very serious road runner or marathoner–in fact I did not “race” marathons, I ran them. I had no time to train seriously for that sort of thing. I enjoyed road races but never traveled very far to run a track meet, road race, or cross country race. I had school-age children who had sports events I wanted to attend, and I needed to be available for them. Running and competing had to fit in with those needs and obligations.
The first “big” meet I participated in was the WAVA meet in Eugene in 1989. That was my first experience with the international scene. The next WAVA meet in which I participated was in Buffalo in 1995. I ran the cross country race and was astonished to find myself on the USA team and receiving a team medal! I became more serious about competition after I retired.
In 1997 I went to the WAVA meet in South Africa. I went because I had long wished to travel to South Africa and it was now possible with the change in government there. I had not retired, and I was in poor shape for track competition. I had all but quit running competitively for several years because of exercise-induced asthma that was poorly controlled. So I went to Durban without sufficient training.
I remember the 1500-meter race when I just about killed myself trying not to be last and telling my self to never ever again turn up at an international meet out of shape! Since I retired, in 1998 I have had the time and energy to train harder. I have also had the leisure time to travel, and since our children are finished with college and graduate school, I feel able to spend some money on travel for such things as track meets in exotic locations!
I am also very fortunate in being able to train with Liberty Athletic Club. We have weekly coached practices year-round, and an excellent coach in Lesley Lehane, the women’s track coach at Boston University and also a former Liberty AC youth runner.
I am a very competitive person, whether in my job or in running. Perhaps some of my motivation for running is that I no longer have to compete in a job, so I can use that energy to see how far I can go with my running.
RWD: You mentioned that while you didn’t have the option of running track when you were in school, you did have sports, such as field hockey. How important was that to your development as an athlete, in your life?
MH: I was a “tomboy” growing up–a derisive term as it was used then, and even now.
I enjoyed playing “war” with my brother. We had a basketball hoop and I would spend hours shooting hoops. We played baseball in the yard using my mother’s rosebed for home plate, which drove her wild. I played field hockey, basketball, and softball in high school. Because I was active in sports, I was advised to become a physical education major in college.
I attended Boston University Sargent College. At that time, the college had two majors, PE and Physical Therapy. I knew by the second day of my freshman year that I was not going to be a PE major and eventually ended up in the Physical Therapy program. I practiced Physical Therapy for three years after college.
In those days, college education for girls was not taken seriously. It was assumed that girls went to college to get an Mrs (find a husband). At Sargent College, it was assumed that many of us would have careers, even if we married. So, the instructors took very seriously the task of preparing us for these careers.
Because Boston University had no sports for women, not even for those of us at Sargent College, I played field hockey for Boston Field Hockey Association, a group of graduates of women’s colleges who would come to Sargent looking for field hockey players. I played because I enjoyed sports, and that was a team sport that was available. I also took up fencing, as a fencing club rented space in the college gym.
If there had been a track team around, no doubt I would have tried that, too. I also went skiing with the outing club from MIT, hiking in the White Mountains with the AMC, etc. I have always enjoyed being physically active. I started hiking in the White Mountains while in high school and continued until I married while in graduate school.
At that time, my husband had no interest in hiking and as our children arrived our jobs kept us busy, I did not return to that. Given that my husband now undertakes long distance walking, he has just left for northern Spain for a 600 mile five-week walk.
It is rather funny, as he now wants me to take up hiking in the White Mountains with him. But he jokes that he will have to wait until I turn 71 or 72 and stop chasing the W70 records, then I will have the time until I get ready to tackle the W75 records. We are talking about a week long walk in Patagonia in the fall, as one of our sons lives in Argentina.
RWD: Tell us a bit about your beginnings in running. A friend recommended Ken Cooper’s “Aerobics” book, we heard.
MH: I got a copy of Kenneth Cooper’s “Aerobics” book and followed the program. If I recall correctly, one was to run a mile or for so many minutes without stopping to get the heart rate up. There was a point system: 20 points, I think, was a good measure of fitness or good for one’s health. I started out running around the college soccer field for whatever the suggested length of time.
I was very much out of shape, and it was very painful. I had gotten seriously out of shape during my grad school days. I kept at it, gradually getting into better shape. I cannot say I enjoyed it much initially but it always felt good when I was finished! In the course of a year or so, I stopped the point counting because I was running far more than he said one needed to do for aerobic fitness.
If I recall correctly, he had a statement that if you were doing more than X, then you were doing it for some reason other than for aerobic health. In my case, that certainly was true. I found it to be a great stress reliever. After a year of so, I decided that since getting into shape had been so painful, I was not going to get out of shape again! That was often a motivator to get me out the door.
The other thing that appealed to me was that I did not need special equipment, did not have to drive somewhere, and did not need to find someone to go with me–it seemed to be the perfect thing for me.
RWD: You said that you didn’t know what road racing was when a friend suggested you do one. Then you ran on the Harvard indoor track and were hooked. Tell us a bit about these experiences.
MH: My colleague talked me into going to local road races where I met a very interesting bunch of guys. They were very encouraging, would tell me about other races, and I started going to a number of them that were local. I knew about road racing, especially the Boston Marathon as I use to ride my bike from my house to the course on Commonwealth Avenue, about two miles from my house, when I was a kid to watch for the marathoners come past.
It never occurred to me then that someday I would run Boston. My colleague also started a track club at the college. We took some students into Franklin Park to run a college cross country race. We both ran the course with them. That was my introduction to cross country, and we took our students into Boston and I ran with the girls in the second Bonnie Bell 10K race. We bought nylon singlets and shorts for the team, which I also wore; it was my first pair of nylon running shorts.
I spent the entire race rubbing my hand over them to make sure I really did have a pair of shorts on! My colleague also talked me into running a marathon, and I ran my first one in 1978, right after the blizzard of ’78, called the Plodders Marathon.
My “carbo loading” consisted of eating a couple of donuts the night before the marathon. Based upon that “training,”I then ran Boston in ’78 without a number, never thinking I could qualify. In those days it was 3:30 qualifying for women regardless of age. The next fall I qualified and ran with a number in 1979, finishing in 3:30 or so.
For some reason I was listed as dnf, but I finished and Fred Brown of North Medford Club witnessed it from the hotel window at the finish line! I ran six marathons before deciding to stop doing that. It took too much time for training, and I wanted to focus on running faster. I was really good at going slow forever, but not very good at running faster in shorter races. A woman runner friend talked me into running the masters mile at the Greater Boston Track Club invitational in January 1980.
My runner friend and I were usually first and second in our age group at local races. I met her at a race, and we kept turning up at the same races. There were very few women masters runners in those days, so we all got to know each other quickly. I came in third, being beaten by two women from Liberty Athletic Club.
That was my introduction to that all-women’s running club. As I started running track meets, I would meet the Liberty masters women who were always there in a group having a good time. Eventually, I joined Liberty.
RWD: When we asked about your sandwich, you talked about the research you read on nutrition and its importance. Do you keep up with this sort of stuff? Because of your running or in spite of it?
MH: I subscribe to Owen Anderson’s “Running Research News.” I read the research there about a study comparing recovery from endurance running by consuming carbohydrates within 20 minutes of completing exercise as compared with eating protein.
There is great interest in the factors behind the success of the Kenyan athletes–including their high carbohydrate diets. I have subscribed to his newsletter for probably five or six years. It has very sound research in it, not pop stuff as one finds in some places. I suspect my interest in nutrition, running physiology, and the like stems from my education as a physical therapist. I am always interested in sound research as opposed to “tradition” or “conventional wisdom.”
I lived through the days when drinking water while exercising was considered bad, when the Boston Marathon had NO water stops, and offered beef stew at the finish, and when women were believed not to be able to run more than 400 meters without doing serious damage to their bodies.
I am not into 39 ways to lose five pounds, or 27 ways to run faster! At my age, I need good information about training and nutrition as old age is gaining on me, and I need to run smarter. I do not believe in nutritional supplements but I think that a sound diet is a key to good health. I do not claim that I never eat junk food, but I think my diet is pretty decent, but not faddish.
RWD: You said that one of the benefits of your running is the travel and meeting people, seeing new places. Talk a bit about that.
MH: One of the fun things about traveling to track meets, as opposed to just playing tourist, is meeting a wide variety of people who are interested in track and field and/or cross country but whose lives otherwise would not intersect with mine. I am an academic, I have spent the overwhelming majority of my life in academic circles.
My life has been focused upon the mind. I am a historian, not an engineer, a scientist, nor a bus driver. When I was practicing physical therapy, I met a wide range of people who were my patients. As a college professor, my students came from a variety of backgrounds, but our common focus was the academic material of the class.
We might sit around and talk about the meaning of life, but the common goal was mastery of subject matter. When I attend track meets, or for that matter track practice with my club, I meet people whose lives are often very different from mine, except that we run.
My friend Louise Adams was a school secretary, and served in the Canadian Navy during WWII. Other runner friends are grade school teachers, college teachers in very different disciplines than mine, doctors, lawyers, but no Indian chiefs I am afraid, artists, musicians, engineers, ministers, computer engineers, sales and marketing folks, owners of moving companies, probation officers, etc. As a person who is curious about just about everything, I find this to be fascinating.
I love to travel and spend periods of time in one place. I have traveled a lot during my life, sometimes it has been the “if it is Tuesday it must be Rome,” but usually it has been “if it is May, it must be Switzerland.” The track meets give me an opportunity to stay in one place and spend my time while not at the track, seeing the sights, experiencing the country, the culture, the food, language, etc. with a bunch of people who also are physically fit and enjoy physical activity.
We do not all share my love of cathedrals and museums, but some do, and some prefer the beach, or just hanging out at the track rehashing races of days long gone when they were young, fast, and strong!