REST IN PEACE JOY JOHNSON
Joy Johnson, 86, the oldest woman to complete the New York City Marathon on Sunday, often said she wanted to die running.
She lived only one day past the race.
Johnson, of San Jose, Calif., had stumbled and hit her head on the road around the 20th mile, said her sister, Faith Anderson, 83, who accompanied Johnson to New York.
Medics wanted to take Johnson to the hospital, but she insisted on continuing the race, Anderson said.
Johnson finished in about eight hours, compared with less than five hours in the early 1990s, when she was at the peak of her marathon running.
On Monday morning, after the two sisters returned from their annual post-marathon visit to the “Today” show crowd at Rockefeller Center, Johnson said she was tired and lay down on her bed at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan. She didn't wake up. She was declared dead at Bellevue Hospital, Anderson said.
"At least she was running, the way she wanted to go," said Johnson's daughter, Diana Boydston, of San Jose.
Johnson had been the oldest woman running the New York City Marathon since 2011. Sunday's race marked the 25th time she had finished the race.
In a pre-race interview, Johnson said she planned to run at her own pace and would walk when tired.
"I'll be at the back of the pack, but I don't mind," she said. “I just praise the Lord I can get out of bed each morning and run. A lot of people my age are in wheelchairs."
On Saturday, she said she was in good health and felt ready to run.
Only 31 of the marathon's 50,000-plus starters this year were over 80, according to race organizers.
Johnson, who had been a gym teacher in San Jose, took up running on a whim after she retired about 25 years ago. She had always been physically active. She worked on her family's farm while growing up in Minnesota and later played tennis and other sports with friends in California.
In the weeks leading up to Sunday's marathon, she followed her daily routine: coffee, Bible lesson, eight-mile run. Some days, she did 150 pushups, she said.
Growing older meant slowing down, which meant running three to eight miles a day, Johnson lamented just a day before the marathon. She used to run 10 to 15 miles a day. She said most of her elderly running friends had switched to half-marathons or had stopped altogether.
Johnson, 5-foot-5 and about 120 pounds, said she ate whatever she wanted but avoided fatty foods. At a lunch Saturday, she ate a hamburger but passed on the French fries, which she offered to her sister.
Johnson was known within the running community, and on Saturday, runners 40 years her junior asked to take photos with her.
"I always say I'm going to run until I drop," she said. "I'm going to die in my tennis shoes. I just don't know when I'm going to quit."
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