Judith Porter started running in December 2008 to train for the Great North Run in 2009. Along with 7 colleagues she was going to run for Arthritis Research. At that point she never thought that she would still be running 15 years later at the age of 70. She is the first to say that it is the friends that she has made along the way that have kept her going. In turn she has tried to encourage others to run as she hears so many people say that they can’t but maintains that it is all a matter of pace and building up slowly. It took her an entire month of trying before she could run one mile without stopping and even then it took about 12 minutes. That first GNR was completed eight and a half months later in 2hr 16mins and some seconds.
Over the intervening years she has lost count of half marathons but has completed 10 marathons including the World Marathon Majors which were completed between 2016 and 2019 finishing with Boston for which she qualified with a time of 4hrs 27 minutes and 15 seconds in Berlin in 2017. It is difficult to qualify for Boston but her tip is to qualify when you are near to the end of the five year time period. Judith was just over 64. The time stands for about 18 months and she had a qualifying time to achieve for Boston of 4.40 when she was 65.
She has twice done the Round Ripon Ultra which is 35miles just so she could tick the Ultra box. Her first time was something over 9 hours and the second time it was just under. She got slightly less lost.
Now she likes to compete in Adventure half marathons around the world and has run in Bhutan in the Himalayas, in Greenland with 5k of the race on the Polar Ice Cap and in Mexico in a race which started at the Lost City in Pelanque.
2024 has been an interesting year so far for Judith. She first of all heard of the club records and realised that the club did not appear to have had a female runner over 65 so she was able to claim some records for both that age group and over 70 as effectively everything she did became a record. She is hoping that it will be an incentive for other ladies in the club to come along and beat them.
In January a friend invited her to stay in Cheshire and do the Essar 4 Villages half marathon. When she discovered this was an England qualifier event she put her name down as the qualification was to be in the top three in the age category and do the half in under 2hrs 30min. There were only two ladies in the category so that was a tick and she just squeezed in at 2.30. The race was hilly and the weather was windy.
Having got the ‘vest’ she trained more than usual and surprised herself and many others by completing the Manchester Half Marathon in 2.10.56. It says a lot for the quality and number of veteran runners that there were nine ladies over 70 in the England team with the fastest running the half in 1.44. Judith was 7th
It is probably surprising to many runners to learn that as you become a veteran the qualifying times become more achievable and as Richard Askwith says in his book the Race Against Time it is sometimes just a matter of keeping going longer than the competition.