June 5, 2008 issue
Guinness World Record Holder
To Run in Saturday’s A Cool 5
Story by Corinne Saunders
“I’m the oldest person to have completed a marathon on each of the seven continents,” said Margaret Hagerty, an 85-year-old from Concord. “I’m in the 2007 book [of Guinness World Records] next to John Glenn, the oldest man in space.”
Beech Mountain Recreation’s Department invited Hagerty to run in the mountain’s inaugural 5-mile race that begins at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, June 7. The race is a fundraiser for the new children’s playground on Beech Mountain, as is the dinner on Friday, June 6, when Hagerty will speak about her experiences and triumphs as a runner.
“I thought it was nice of them to invite me,” Hagerty said. Her only worry is that she will be slow from having recently returned from running a 10K race in China. “I was gone 16 days. We did a lot of touring and saw a lot. I don’t think I’m going to be very fast Saturday, but they said ‘come anyway,’ so I’ll come,” Hagerty said.
Until China, the marathon at Mount Everest stood out as Hagerty’s hardest race. “I don’t think they can measure it accurately…it was more like 26.4 miles [at Mount Everest], but this one was more treacherous,” she said.
“The country’s really beautiful and progressive, but the race on the Great Wall was the hardest physical thing I’ve ever done,” she continued. “There were so many steps of varying heights; [they were] really steep.” Hagerty said there were 3,711 steps, but she got it done.
“Most was steps and rocky path…you had to watch your feet the whole time. I wasn’t in any big rush because I knew if I fell I was in deep trouble,” she said, adding that if she had fallen on Mount Everest, she would fall onto ground, but falling off the Great Wall would mean she would just keep falling.
Hagerty ran and toured China with a group of 140 participants from Marathon Tours & Travel, an organization based in Boston. She met up with them after her flight to Beijing, she said. She had run in Antarctica with one man in the group, competed in Iceland with another and raced in New Zealand with a third.
The runners chose from 5K, 10K, half marathon and marathon options for the race at the Great Wall.
“I really regret I didn’t do the half marathon,” Hagerty said. “I could have definitely completed [it].” She chose the 10K because she knew it would be a difficult run and wanted to be sure she could complete it, she added.
“We had to go to the wall two days before [the race] and run 3 miles on the wall. A lot of people dropped down in category after that, [but] I kept mine 10K.”
Hagerty won her age group—70 and over.
“We had 1,600 participants from 46 countries; I was the oldest participant,” she said. “CNN News was there [and] ran a report [that] said I was the oldest participant to do a race on the wall.”
The 3-mile segment of the race that participants ran on the wall included running up oftentimes confusing towers, and in some places, people were stationed in the towers to help direct, Hagerty said. Portions of the wall have nothing to hold on to, or sometimes a rope or other insecure handrail, she added.
“The wall is 4,300 miles long; we did 3 miles on the wall, which was hard enough,” she said. “You come down off the wall and go through little villages. We went through about three little villages, not counting the big one where we started.”
The villagers look forward to the runners coming each year, she added.
“At one point, there was a lady [who] started running with me,” Hagerty said. “A couple kids [were also] running back and forth with me.”
Hagerty began running at age 64 to help kick her smoking habit. “I went to a stop smoking clinic and they said ‘stop smoking, get out and move it.’ So after my morning coffee, instead of having my cigarette, I went out and ran down the street,” she said.
She decided she liked running and went a little farther the next day, she added.
After joining the Salisbury Rowan Runners in Salisbury, one girl asked Hagerty to run with her in the New York City Marathon. The invitation gave her the motivation to keep working her distance up to marathon length—26.2 miles.
Her father was a speedboat racer, and Hagerty attributes her competitive nature to him. “I love to compete,” she said good-naturedly. “I’ll run against you, or anyone, any day.”
Hagerty admits that she has pretty much done every race around the world to date that has caught her attention, with one exception. “I may go back to Africa and do the Kilimanjaro run,” she said.
She did not plan to become a world record-holding runner. “I never planned any of it; it just kind of evolved,” she said. “I’d done a lot of traveling before I ever started running, so I knew I liked seeing new things,” she said.
Hagerty retired from a local hospital’s accounting department, and prior to that, she worked in the office for her father’s concrete plant in Concord.
She competes in the Senior Games and qualified to go to the state finals, held in Raleigh in the fall, where she will compete in track runs and a 5K. “I’m in a new age group this time, [ages] 85 to 89, so maybe I will set new records,” she said.
Hagerty began teaching herself some piano pieces six months ago, realizing that she will not be able to run forever. “I can read music; I took music lessons when I was a little girl, [so] I’m picking some pieces that don’t look too difficult,” she said.
She also keeps busy by playing hand bells at church, doing income taxes for the elderly free of charge through AARP and working at the board of elections during voting.
Registration for Beech Mountain’s A Cool 5 is open through the morning of the race.
For more information or to register, click to www.acool5.com.
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