Age Is Just a Number for This Runner

World record-setting runner Anne Clarke is slowing down a bit.

She’s sworn off running marathons, and does about a 13-minute mile--a minute or two off her peak pace.

But trim and toned, wearing bright blue spandex leggings and well-worn running shoes, Clarke says she has no immediate plans to ditch the second love of her life.

“When I’m the very last one to finish, I may consider just staying home, but that hasn’t happened yet,” she said.

By the way, Clarke turns 87 in September--and didn’t even start running until she was 69.

Incredible? Indeed, even considering that about all she has to do these days to set records is to show up for a race.

“There are people her age who can’t even walk, who can’t even get out of bed,” said David Patt, executive director of the Chicago Area Runners Assn., of which Clarke is a longtime member.

Since her first competition, a 10K (6.2-mile) contest she ran in 69 minutes the same year she began the sport, Clarke has competed in more than 500 races worldwide. She holds more than 30 age-related running records in races from 5Ks to marathons, 26.2 miles.

From Finland to Hawaii, she has competed in eight marathons--her last in 5:54:10 at age 81 in Chicago, setting a national and world record for her age group.

After competing in about 20 races last year, mostly 5 miles and under, Clarke now plans to limit her running to 5Ks, 3.1 miles.

For the first half of this year, she was sidelined with shingles, a foot fracture sustained while teaching aerobics and, worst of all, the death of her 88-year-old husband and life’s love, Hamilton Clarke.

“He called himself Mr. Anne Clarke,” she said fondly. An insurance agent, Hamilton Clarke was no runner but accompanied his wife to races around the globe, even when he was in a wheelchair in his later years.

The bed in her apartment in Carol Stream, a Chicago suburb, is topped with a colorful quilt her husband made by hand with squares he cut from her old race T-shirts. It’s a testimonial of his love and support for a pastime others often thought foolish for a woman her age.

“We had 63 years together,” she said in a recent interview, her grief over his death last January still palpable.

Now, she’s trying to get back on track. She ran her first race of the year in May, a 5K in an “awful” 42 minutes.

“The old gray mare ain’t what she used to be,” she said.

Clarke shrugged when asked about the secret to her tenacity.

“I’m amazed myself,” she said. “I can’t understand it. I never was athletic at all. I just sat.”

For nearly seven decades, she was a self-described slug.

She began as an inactive, chubby child. “When I was a child, only boys went out and played games. Little girls played with dolls.”

Although Clarke later slimmed down her 5-foot frame, she remained sedentary as an adult.

“I thought anybody was silly to walk if they had a car,” said Clarke, who reared two sons and taught second grade in suburban Chicago for 24 years before retiring at 69.

Her life changed shortly after retirement when she enrolled in a YMCA fitness class that required participants to run a mile.

“I told the teacher I didn’t like running. I had on my dollar tennis shoes, and she looked down at my feet and said, ‘No wonder. Go out and get yourself a good pair of shoes.’ ”

Clarke did, for $24--cheap by today’s standards but a pretty high price back in 1978. She ran her first 10K that year and was hooked.

Clarke calls running “my medicine,” crediting it for curing her arthritis, bursitis and back pain.

She also changed her diet, shunning red meat and eating lots of fruits and vegetables, although she indulges in a weekly piece of chocolate cake and an occasional glass of wine.

Clarke says she got her early inspiration from veteran marathoner Bill Rodgers, whose poster is tacked to her bathroom door with a handwritten message offering his best wishes.

Now Rodgers considers Clarke an inspiration.

“It kind of shows us . . . those of us who are younger, that you can do these phenomenal things,” said Rodgers, 48. “That’s the greatest message someone like her sends: Your life isn’t over.”

Dr. Kenneth Cooper, president and founder of Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas, noted that many older people engage in strenuous activity like running. But Cooper said doing so to the degree that Clarke has is “extraordinary.”

Amid the evidence of her success, Clarke’s twinkling eyes narrow when asked why so many older people turn sluggish.

“It’s a mental thing,” she said. “They accept it.”