Strolling the Distance : Man, 84, Beats the Heat and Tired Feet in Marathon

At 84 years old, Thousand Oaks resident William Kuester was determined to finish his long-planned Sunday stroll.

After eight hours, five minutes and 12 seconds on blistered feet over sizzling pavement, he finally made it: He finished the Los Angeles Marathon.

“It was good to cross the line,” he reflected with a grin, soaking his feet in a lukewarm tub about 24 hours after completing the race.

The fastest of two octogenarians to finish the 26.2-mile trek, Kuester won a medal for the 80-to-98 age group--his third victory in that category in the last four years.

A retired minister and administrator for the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Kuester strode through downtown Los Angeles at an average pace of 18.5 minutes per mile. He started at 9 a.m. with 19,072 other runners, including six in the over-80 crowd, and crossed the finish line a workday later, with decidedly less company.

Almost six hours behind the winner, he nonetheless beat a few stragglers to the end of the grueling course, trouncing the last-place woman by a solid 2 hours and 43 minutes.

Midway through his trek, lunch-hour temperatures soared to a blazing 87 degrees. But the mild-mannered Kuester--who boasts of running in 10-below-zero snowstorms in Canada dressed only in shorts, a hat and gloves--said the blistering heat didn’t faze him.

The blistering feet, however, he could have done without.

Although he walks four miles every other day through the aptly named Sunset Hills area, Kuester said his feet were not prepared for the sheer length of the marathon.

His shabby, six-year-old shoes--completely flat, with no support or spring--started rubbing about a third of the way through the race. And that’s when his feet started acting up.

The former pastor had to cajole his aching appendages the rest of the way, keeping up a running monologue: “You can’t quit, c’mon, keep going, let’s go. We’re going to make it regardless of anything.”

Listening to his patter, Kuester’s wife, Theda, whose own feet draw the line at one-mile strolls, giggled half-incredulously. “I hope you told them ‘thank you’ at the end,” she chided him.

A vegetarian since childhood, Kuester abhors liquor, tobacco, coffee and sugar and finds edicts against eating meat in the first chapter of his oversized King James Bible, printed in 1811.

While he always ate healthfully, the trim, clear-eyed Kuester did not start exercising until his mid-60s, when he began a 15-minute calisthenic workout each morning and soon progressed to jogging, walking and riding an exercise bike. For each of the past 10 years, he’s walked one full-length marathon.

And each year he picks up a new trick.

Struggling with aching soles last year, he inserted a waterlogged sponge in his shoe to cushion the pounding and finished with a soggy spring to his step. Fighting the crowds in the early portion of this year’s race, he jockeyed for position behind a man pushing a baby stroller and let the father clear a path down the center of the street.

He also took time to savor the crowd’s applause and take in some colorful street scenes through Chinatown.

His wife, who tried to run the last few hundred yards with him but had to drop back, treated him to a victory dinner of mushroom soup and buttered toast as they watched the marathon on television Sunday night. She won’t be a bit surprised when he hits the pavement again later this week.

“His feet were sore last night,” she said, “but now, he’s about ready to go again.”