‘They’re Waiting for Me to Die’: A 72-Year-Old Runner Will Not Let This Race Go

When the doors of her gym opened at 6, she would run on the carpeted track. “Then an aerobics class,” she said. “At lunch, I’d take an hour and a half and run five miles. I’d do a quick wipe up, put the jeans back on and some perfume and head back to work. After I got off, I was back for racquetball.”

But it was in a running shop in Denver in 1984 where destiny seemed to find her. She met Jim Butera, a bearded hippie who ran obscure races called “ultras,” sold running shoes and professed extreme running as a way of life. “I thought he was the best thing since canned corn,” Hickman said. When he showed her a flier for his latest idea, a 100-mile race in the mountains of Colorado — a race across the sky — it sounded impossible. She was hooked.

Her Leadville initiation in August of that year was a jarring portent of the relationship she would have with the race for the rest of her life. After face-planting on a root near Mile 13, she pushed on with blood oozing from her knees and face and a twisted ankle rapidly swelling. Eighty-seven miles later, tears began to flow as she limped over the last hill and saw the finish line.

The same year her love affair with Leadville began, her first marriage ended. “Because of my exercise addiction,” Hickman admitted.

The next year, she won the women’s division and placed 11th overall. She returned like a homing pigeon for the next 27 years — finishing 13 more times — making her the most prolific female runner in Leadville’s storied history.

In 1997, she wed again, this time to a runner on an iconic peak of the course during her beloved race. The couple moved to the city of Leadville in 2004, and she further enmeshed herself in the ever-expanding series of Leadville races.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/07/sports/leadville-marge-hickman.html