"You Get Out What You Put In": An 86-Year-Old Marathoner on the Power of Determination
Ginette Bedard will tell it to you straight: You can run all you want, but if you don’t have the right mindset, you are not going to make it very far.
Take it from her. Bedard—pictured above at the 2020 NYRR Club Night in January, where she won Runner of the Year for her age group, women 85-89—is 86 years old and has completed 20 marathons. The kicker? She did not even start running until she was 68. She lives in Howard Beach, in Queens, and runs at least two hours a day, often going out in the morning and again in the evening. She takes most of her runs on the beach, where the sand provides a nice soft surface. She takes bread with her to feed ducks along the way. “What else am I going to do when I’m 86?” she asks. “Sit on the couch and eat potato chips? No.”
Running, she says, keeps her mood up. “I do it every day, and I come back happy,” she said. “If you don’t do it, you’re depressed.” Even now, with New York City under a shelter-in-place order, Bedard keeps up her runs. She notes that it's "just her and the seagulls" on the beach most of the time, and that she is careful to maintain social distance if she does see others around her.
Bedard’s running hero is Grete Waitz, the legendary nine-time New York City Marathon champion and member of the New York Road Runners Hall of Fame. Asked about her own place in women’s running history, Bedard says that, like Waitz, “I earned it. You get out what you put in.”
Her son, Gery, 54, runs also, inspired by his mother’s determination. Bedard’s late husband also began running when she did. “I would tell everybody you can do it too,” she said. “Buy a pair of sneakers and try slowly, but surely.”
Before she retired, Bedard worked for an airline, and she used to watch Jack LaLanne on TV to get fit. She never thought running was for her, but was inspired by hearing people talk about running the New York City Marathon. However, she did not think she had 26.2 miles in her. “I said, I’m not a Superwoman. And then somebody told me, 'What do you care? As long as you see the finish line.’ Ay, that gave me a boost!” she said.
She applied for the 2002 marathon, was accepted, and the rest is history. “My best run was my very first one,” Bedard said. She recounts the cheers from spectators as a highlight. And that finish line? “Marvelous,” she said. She has now run New York 17 times, and logged 333 additional New York Road Runners races. Most recently, she placed third in her age group in the Joe Kleinerman 10K in January.
Bedard says she has run injury- and pain-free for years, and has no plans to slow down. “My body says go ahead, go ahead, go,” she said. “I’m happy, I’m healthy.”