Source: http://espn.go.com/
Author: Lynn Olszowy

Harriette Thompson has found a clever way to pass the time when she runs marathons. The classically trained concert pianist imagines her favorite pieces of music.

“When I’m in a place that might be pretty boring, I run to some music in my mind,” she explained. “I hardly know I’m running when I’m thinking about that.”

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Over the weekend, musical thoughts helped Thompson run into the history books for the second year in a row. Last year, she broke the marathon record by a woman over 90 by more than two hours. On Sunday, she became the oldest woman to ever complete a marathon at the age of 92 years, 65 days.

Two days later, she had a spring in her step.

“I feel like a million dollars right now,” Thompson said Tuesday from her home in a Charlotte, North Carolina, retirement community. “I think it must do something to your life system or something that makes you feel up on top of the world after you’ve done a marathon.”

Throughout her 7 hours, 24 minutes and 36 seconds of running, she had Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff and his Prelude in D Major keeping her company.

“It’s fun to just think about it because I think it’s one of his most beautiful preludes,” she said over the phone Tuesday.

But there was something else that occupied Thompson’s mind while she ran the 26.2 miles of Sunday’s San Diego Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon.

“I also think about all the ways I’m working to help other people,” she said.

Thompson has run 16 marathons to raise money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society as part of Team in Training. In all, she’s garnered more than $100,000 in donations.

“It makes me very grateful to all the people who have been so generous,” she said. “Every year, when I write my little letter asking my friends [to donate], they keep saying, ‘I thought last year was your last one.'”

This year, Thompson says she had extra motivation to run. After she lost her husband of 67 years to cancer in January, her eldest son, Sydnor Thompson III, was diagnosed with colon cancer.

“I have so much incentive because now I’m really trying to help get that research done so that maybe it will help my son get over his cancer,” she said.

“It’s humbling,” said Sydnor, 61, a pastor in suburban Charlotte. “I don’t know of any child who has ever been loved more than I’ve been loved by my mother.”

“I’m just praying that he’ll get better real fast,” adds Thompson. “The fact [I set] a record, that’s great, but that’s not my main reason.”

In fact, when Thompson first took up running at age 76, she never dreamed of setting any records. She didn’t even think she’d run a marathon. She signed up for her first marathon in 1999 figuring she’d walk the length of the course.

“But when I got out to San Diego, everybody was running, so I started to run,” she said.

Today she credits running with keeping her going all these years, though she has overcome obstacles of her own.

In 2010, while battling an aggressive form of oral cancer — which ate away the roof of her mouth — she was told she had only three months to live, two years at best. Thompson didn’t let that prognosis stop her from running the San Diego marathon that year or the two years that followed. She did take a break in 2013 when the cancer treatment proved too taxing.

And for the past year, she has received radiation treatment for squamous cell carcinoma on her legs. She wore white tights during this year’s race to cover the open wounds she still has from the treatment.

“I was really pleased my legs didn’t hurt me during the run,” she said.

“I don’t think people realize how serious the burns are on her legs,” Sydnor said. “She just endures and pushes through.”

The San Diego marathon is the only marathon she’s ever run because of its commitment to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and the people who run the marathon are just as loyal to Thompson.

“As people would go by, they would say, ‘C’mon Harriette,'” she said. “At least 10 people told me they signed up to run the marathon because they read about me.”

Thompson’s biggest supporter at the race was one of her five children, Brenny, who ran alongside his mother.

“I have to have a lot of energy [to run], so he kept feeding me,” she said. “One time someone brought me a muffin.”

And when someone wanted a picture, Brenny, 56, was there as a safeguard.

“My son was protecting me from having me stop,” Thompson said. “He’d say, ‘You need to take some selfies.'”

“Even though she’s not moving that fast, she definitely has a rhythm,” said Brenny, who runs a real estate company in Charlotte.

Keeping rhythm is something Thompson has done all her life. She actually credits her background as a pianist for her being able to endure the tedium of marathon after marathon, year after year.

“The discipline you have to have when you’re a pianist certainly does play into doing another chore like running,” she said.

Thompson has every intention of running for as long as she can, and knowing she’s making a difference is what’s really music to her ears.

“I think at my age if I can do anything to help somebody, I’m amazed,” she said.