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Letter to the editor

Devoted to run

For Lynn Gray, it's a business. She trains runners and, she says, it's never too late to start.

By MARLENE SOKOL, Times Staff Writer
Published November 9, 2007

Lynn Gray, left, works with Mary Jueong of Lutz during a morning workout at Lake Park. Gracy coaches women on proper walking/running techniques.
	[Times photo: Chris Zuppa]

ODESSA - Will you run in your retirement? 

Lynn Gray runs marathons.

It doesn't matter how hot it is, or that her bones are acting their age - 55. Running is good for them, Gray says. It's good for the knees and the heart and basically whatever is giving you trouble.

Gray has been a running coach for more than a decade, with more than 80 long distance races behind her. She's used to placing first or second in her age group.

She thrives on the challenge, exotic locales and friends she makes along the way.

She's building a business training other runners, through an organization called Take ... The First Step. She's on a quest to get Tampa on its feet. 

In an hour interview at a Carrollwood coffee shop, Gray never stopped talking about running.

Q: Let's start with some personal information.

A. I live in Tampa, I have for the last 45 years. I married ...when I was 30. I have one son; he is 22. I just retired from teaching after 23 years, at Jesuit High School for eight years, and I am embarking on a full-time occupation, if you will, on putting this community into good shape.

Q. You taught at Claywell Elementary, too, right?

A. I taught at Claywell for five years and I tried to stay wherever my son was. I joined him at Jesuit High School when he was in ninth grade. His name is Thomas. He's now a manager, opening up his own Best Buy store in Wesley Chapel and going to school.

Q. Your husband is a doctor, right?

A. My husband just retired two weeks ago, and he was a CAT scan technologist.

Q. Now, how did Take ... The First Step begin?

When I was teaching at Claywell almost 12 years ago, a group of girls came up to me and wanted me to train them to run.

It was the Gasparilla time of year. I said, I have a very full schedule. But if you can get 10 girls to show up at the track, then I would be willing to spend an hour a week and help train them.

And so they did. I felt like I could help them, and I was very much like them at one time. I was just your average walker and I trained myself to become a very competent runner.

Q. Just an average walker?

A. I did start running 1 mile a day when I was 17 years old and I was very disciplined and I would not not do it. Two or three years later, I met some guys who invited me to run long distances with them.

And, mind you, in 1978 when there were very few women doing marathons, I did my first marathon called the Schlitz National Marathon, in Tampa, Florida. We went right down Fowler Avenue before it was even finished.

Q. Take me through the first marathon. What was it like getting through it?

A. When I started, I was in my very young 20s. We didn't have any fancy running shoes. We didn't have Gatorade. We just simply jogged, I think they call it, jogged, like an 11-minute mile.

We'd stop to pick oranges, stopped at a store to get doughnuts whenever we got hungry, and that's how we did our long run, and that's how we did our marathon. It was not a real formalized process. My first time was 4:27 and my longest (training) run was about 9 miles.

There is a mental toughness too. You have to assume you're going to go through some pain. And when you train with others, the pain gets diffused. It moves around.

Q. Is there a runner's high? Do you lose yourself running?

A. Absolutely. I think when you learn to go within your aerobic capability, in other words, you don't go overly fast, you can relax and that's what really gives you that endorphin high, that runner's high, you're really settled and peaceful.

You don't usually get that kind of feeling until you run a few miles because your muscles have to relax, your breathing has to get rhythmic, your cadence, everything seems to have a rhythm.

Q. Is it ever too late to take up running?

A. Oh, absolutely not. We have an 81-year-old man in our group. He ran his first race in his 60s, and since that he's run four Boston marathons. He just won the Senior Games here in Tampa ... he started in his 60s.

Q. You sound almost evangelical about this.

A. I'm often reminded of a guy I was running with in Boston one year. We were going up Heartbreak Hill, which is the fifth hill, and I was complaining until I saw this guy with one leg beating me. He had an athletic prosthesis. He was running and he was giving me all the enthusiastic talk about "you can do it."

Q. Have you seen people lose a lot of weight?

A. Oh, yes. Running is the hardest thing. It's the hardest thing to be an aerobic person who does outside running.

You've got the heat, the humidity, the wind, and the highest amount of calories metabolically are burned running outside vs. if you do an aerobic activity inside in an air-conditioned room. It's a very potent way of slimming down in terms of burning up calories. But I don't push that. I like to push it as a healthy lifestyle.

Q. Why not push it as a calorie burner?

A. It associates it many times with a diet.

And many women who have had diet experiences have failed, and I don't want to associate running with failure.

Q. You're a thin person. Is that all from running or do you watch what you eat?

A. I am aware of what I eat. I know that the less refined food I have, the more energy I'm going to have. Refined food takes energy to burn and that decreases the energy I have for running.

I eat more protein than people think that you would. I eat very light at night. I eat big at morning, big at lunch. I snack all day with fruits and pretzels, healthy stuff. But I do enjoy a glass of wine at night.

Q. We're going to publish on Nov. 9. At that point, could someone get ready for the Gasparilla 5K or 15K races?

A. Absolutely. They should start right at the beginning of the month.

You have November, December, January, a three-month program. Perfect.

A 5K is for someone with maybe no mileage at all. The person who has a little bit of mileage can possibly do 15K.

Q. You told me awhile back that you have osteoporosis, the bone-thinning disease. Yet you still run distances when a lot of women with osteoporosis stop. What's that like?

A. Recently I broke a bone at the base of my spine by falling.

Q. So are there precautions you should take?

A. Osteoporosis can become crippling if you allow it to mentally keep you sedentary.

As long as you have proper lighting, a good surface without limbs, and you are running with someone else, I suggest that you keep on running. Bone density increases with resistance and running is resistance. That bone I broke recently, it has healed.

The worst thing would be not to (run.) If you discontinue a big part of your lifestyle, then what are you going to do? If you stop being mobile, stop exercising, then you are going to gain weight and then the weight might create fractures.

Q. Did you ever think you'd be running in retirement?

A. Every time I finish a marathon, I say this will be my last one, and most people say that. Undeniably, for me there is an allure to it.

For me, it is a challenge. It's like going on a hike. And I love the variables. The more variables I have, the temperature, the elevation, I like it. I like to beat the variables.

Q. What are some of the more challenging marathons you have run?

A. The last one I did was the hardest one in the world, the Kona in Hawaii. That's on a volcanic rock. My favorite one is the New York City Marathon.

That one and the Marine Corps Marathon. I like that one because it makes you proud of your country. And New York just makes you love the idea that there is this multicultural element and everyone comes to join in the sport.

I can tell you the most beautiful one, in environmental terms with the fall leaves, is in Minnesota, the Twin Cities. Six thousand people literally run through the parks and the rolling hills.

Q. Does your husband ever think this is crazy?

A. My husband is very supportive. When I have a difficult or challenging race, I have my husband come with me because that support is, without question, invaluable. Does he think I'm crazy to do so many races? Yes. But he plays tennis just as much as I race.

Q. Getting philosophical here, it seems that with each year that goes by this obesity crisis in our nation gets worse. Where do you see all that going?

A. I think I'm more optimistic. I think that with the communication system we have and the amount of people that are into physical fitness, especially women, that number is growing. Marathons have higher numbers of runners. There are more females in marathons, and that's awareness. Not fitness, awareness.

Q. What do people do once they have this awareness?

A. They weave it into their lifestyles because they see that they have to readjust their work patterns, their family pattern. It's a hard thing. With both people working, husband and wife, some people alone with two jobs, they have to figure out a way of just putting an hour, or at least a half hour, and it has to be aerobic.

Q. Like your lunch hour?

A. Like your lunch hour, even if it's just walking, a speed half-hour of aerobic exercise, preferably outside. You have oxygen, the fresh air is important, the sunshine is important, presumably you will have a little bit more camaraderie. And you set a good example for the community.

On the web

To learn more

You can find out more about Lynn Gray's coaching services and Take ... The First Step by e-mailing lgray88@yahoo.com

For information about the upcoming Gasparilla races, go to www.tampabayrun.com.

[Last modified November 8, 2007, 07:03:37]