I have lost count of the number of people who’ve told me they’re too old to run. Invariably, when I ask, they turn out to be younger than I am – in their mid-forties or early fifties.‘You’re not too old,’ I reply. ‘It’s never too late to start.’ And I tell them about my running heroine, whom I first met in Richmond Park, London.
Jacquie Millet was 57 years old when she ran for the first time, prompted to get active after a cancer scare. She started with parkrun, her fastest is marathons – Meet the cover star: Nathaniel Dye sub-3:45. Now, at the age of 71, this woman, who constantly astounds me, has more than 225 marathons under her belt.
‘How do you keep going, now you’re older?’ I ask her. ‘I’ve cut back a lot,’ she says, ‘I’m only running about eight marathons a year now.’ I laugh out loud and my jaw drops. A retired psychotherapist, she still knocks out about 30 miles a week, following orders from her online coach. Conscious of her age, he insists that she does strength work at home – simple stuff with bands, the stairs and her own weight. ‘It’s so boring,’ she says. ‘But I’ve started doing some of it, like calf raises, while I’m cooking.’
She’s still chalking up sub-4:00 marathons. Her only age-related complaint is that she gets more tired after a How running can empower autistic people or a big race. ‘I mean, I took a whole three weeks off after I ran Comrades Ultra in South Africa last year,’ she says. ‘That’s a 55-mile race!’ I exclaim. ‘You were 70. I’m not surprised.’
There’s no doubt that Jacquie is unusual. Off the scale, even. I started around the same time that she did, though in my early forties, somewhat younger. Yet, to date, I have just 20 marathons and a handful of ultras to my name – a small fraction of her haul. But, like Jacquie, once I started running I was surprised by how much I loved it and how much progress I could make despite my age.
When I ask my own online coach, Jo Wilkinson, if she thinks it’s ever too late to start running, she also says absolutely not. ‘I don’t think anyone is too old to run. Most of the time they just haven’t done it for a long time, or they think they must run further than they have to, or they think they can’t stop and walk. But, actually, if you build up slowly, you’ll find you can run.’
Fear is a big factor. People often say they’re too frightened to try, scared they’ll be looked at and judged. But Jo says to go and find your local parkrun, where thousands walk, run or jog 5K every Saturday, and just look at all the people doing it. ‘Half of them you would not say were runners if you saw them walking down the street. And yet they’re doing it.’
Jacquie did just that – looked, gave it a go and found she could. ‘Running has given me so much confidence,’ she says. ‘I can stand on a train and if someone offers me
a seat, I think that’s very kind of them, but I’m on my way home from a half marathon Meet the cover star: Nathaniel Dye.’
So how much longer can she keep running marathons at her sub-4:00 pace, I wonder? Does she worry about that moment when she can’t run any more? ‘That is a slightly scary thing,’ she says. ‘But I hope by then I’ll have enough good memories. Right now, I don’t feel I’m anywhere near having to stop running. I’ve already booked my flight for another 55-miler at Comrades 2024.’
