They're running strong in their 80s

They might be high-mileage models, but they’re still winning competitions, and they look 15 years younger than their ages.

Green Valley runners Jim “Sully” Sullivan, 86, and wife Gerry (though she spells it Geri when signing up after she found herself registered with the men), 81, have won too many races to count. And Sully recently was named “Most Distinguished Participant” by the Southern Arizona Roadrunners, awarded to the athlete who is the greatest inspiration to their sport.

The Tucson running group, formed in 1972, boasts more than a thousand members and sponsors road races and other events, with proceeds going to local charities.

“We’re grateful for all they do for runners,” said Sully, who has outlasted all but one male member in his 80s; Gerry is the only woman left in her age group.

Both continue to run the Bobbi Olson half-marathon each year. Sully took the Tucson Marathon title for his age group in 1999, at 76, and Gerry finished runner-up that year.

“We’re most proud of the Portland Marathon, though,” he says.

Both were runners-up at just under six hours in that one when he was 75 and she was 70.

Jim, a World War II infantry vet and college pole vaulter who went nearly 13 feet on a bamboo pole, has been featured in Running Times magazine, and the couple won the Arizona Governor’s Council on Health and Physical Fitness and Sports Senior Award in 2002.

Gerry never “did sports,” and was the studious bookworm, she says. But now she’s the health nut in the family.

Both cancer survivors, they were the first trainers for the now popular “Better Than Ever” walk/run cancer charity program. Founder Heather Alberts ran with Gerry in the half-marathon and they sort of conjured up the idea during the race, she said.

Heavy medals

It’s no exaggeration to say they have a 60-pound bag of medals stuffed away in a closet, and they’ve given an equal amount to school running programs and family members.

Neither took up the sport till late in life.

Both retired from Pacific Bell, where they met almost 30 years ago, and Sully only started because he was challenging youngsters in tennis and wanted to keep up.

“A tennis buddy asked me to join him in the Bay to Breakers,” he said, a 7.5 mile race in San Francisco with about 60,000 participants.

Gerry drove them down and saw everyone having so much fun she joined them the following year.

“I got her a pair of running shoes and we’ve been running together ever since,” he said as he smiled at her.

They started doing 5Ks, 10Ks and 10-mile road races, then a half-marathon.

Discovering a run/short walk regenerative training method for seniors at a running camp in Squaw Valley, they did their first marathon together in ’96 when he was 73 and she was 68.

The couple ran five marathons in 1998, including the original Olympic course with 38 other Americans in Athens.

“We share. It’s meditative time. It’s basically a health regimen; it’s not the competition,” Gerry explained.

They have run sandy beach races along the Pacific Coast, the Crater Lake Rim Run, into Death Valley and the California mountains, Senior Games all over the country, even the locally famous Bisbee stair climb.

They once trained in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Cool, Calif., where they stayed close to each other for protection from mountain lions — one had earlier killed a runner in the area.

Sully once did the Modesto, Calif., “Can to Can,” each competitor obliged to chug a beer every half mile.

The grandparents of eight and great-grandparents of four love to do what they love together.

When they’re on cruises, “we always run the top deck,” Gerry said.

Alert and ready for their morning run, these two keep going and going, always looking down the road.

“I’ll be running till the day I stop walking,” Gerry declared, as she waited for Sully to state his goal.

He immediately shot back, “I want to run the half-marathon when I’m 90.”

Mike Touzeau is a freelance writer living in Green Valley.