Christine Kennedy: PA Masters Distance Runner Extraordinaire

Photo by Susan Wiedmann

By Bob Burns

In the thousands of hours she has spent running, less than one minute is all that separated Christine Kennedy from claiming a spot on the starting line of the Olympic marathon.

To qualify for the Irish Olympic team in 1992, Kennedy needed to run a marathon in 2 hours and 35 minutes. Having clocked 2:35:05 at the 1989 Berlin Marathon, Kennedy won the 1991 Dublin Marathon in 2:35:56, just outside the Olympic qualifying standard.

If you think she’s haunted by that near miss, think again – because Kennedy has thought about it a lot.

“There’s a reason I didn’t go to the Olympics,” said Kennedy, who moved to California 15 years ago and is now a U.S. citizen living in Los Gatos. “I think I’ve been given a gift that allowed me to keep running well for as long as I have. That might not have happened had I made the Olympics.”

Twenty years later, that gift keeps on giving. Kennedy has won her age group in each of the last three years at the Boston Marathon. At the recent World Masters Athletics Outdoor Championships in Sacramento, the 56-year-old Kennedy won the 5,000 meters and the marathon in the women’s 55-59 age group and picked up a third gold medal as a member of the winning U.S. marathon team.

Kennedy, who had never competed in the 5,000 meters on the track prior to the WMA Championships, was up against Kathryn Martin, one of the most accomplished masters runners in the world. Christine and her coach, Tom McGlynn, viewed the 5,000 as a tune-up for the marathon, but they also felt she could win it.

“I knew how fit Christine was,” McGlynn said. “I was confident that if she hung around, she could win it in the last mile.”

That’s exactly what she did. Kennedy pulled away from Martin in the closing stages to win in 19:36.56, more than 20 seconds ahead of Martin (19:58.74). Martin, a 59-year-old from Northport, N.Y., had earlier won the 8-kilometer cross country event and would add a second WMA gold medal with her victory in the 10,000 meters.

“I had never even met Kathy before, and to be racing her was exciting,” Kennedy said. “I really felt the energy of the crowd.”

Nine days after winning the 5,000, Kennedy was on the starting line of the WMA marathon, held on a loop course around the American River Parkway. Kennedy was able to gauge her position throughout the race and wound up winning the W55 race by more than 18 minutes in 3:00:48.

The time was slower than the 2:51:36 she ran at the St. George Marathon in Utah and the 2:56:17 she clocked this spring in Boston, but winning was the objective in Sacramento.

“I was so pleased to be back on the podium,” Kennedy said. “To win the team gold as well was really special. I’ll have fantastic memories of the WMA event because you’re racing against people in your own age group and get to meet so many wonderful people.”

McGlynn, who has been coaching Kennedy for about a year, minimizes the role he’s had in her recent successes.

“It took me about a week or two to figure you how good she was,” McGlynn said. “When you have someone that good, you don’t have to do too much other make sure they don’t kill themselves with overtraining.”

Kennedy envisioned none of this growing up in Ireland, where she enjoyed playing soccer with the boys but never dreamed of running marathons. She was a housewife with two young children when she happened to be watching the 1982 Dublin Marathon. She heard one of the announcers say that the top woman had two young children.

“That really inspired me,” Kennedy said. “I said, ‘I’m going to go and win that race some day.”

It took Kennedy just 2½ years to break three hours in the marathon. In 1990, she made good on her promise to win the Dublin race and repeated her victory in 1991, the race in which she came so close to earning an Olympic berth.

In the mid-1990s, Kennedy and her family moved to Sacramento, where her husband took a job with Sun Microsystems. Kennedy joined the Buffalo Chips and continued her running career.

“I’ve always been competitive, even at work,” Kennedy said. “I just needed something of my own, something I could have myself. That’s what running gave me.”

Six months after moving to California, Kennedy relocated to the Bay Area, where her two daughters attended high school. Now divorced, Christine is the co-owner of Athletic Performance, a running store in Los Gatos. She organizes local runs and shares her knowledge and passion in a fast-paced Irish brogue.

“You talk about one in a million – she’s more like one in 100 million,” McGlynn said. “She’s an amazing woman, the way she’s kept it going.”

Kennedy has no plans to slow down anytime soon. Next up on her schedule is the USA Masters 15k Championships in Buffalo, N.Y., where she looks forward to racing Martin again.

“I love running, I love competing,” she said. “I’m always forward to the next race.”