{"id":347,"date":"2015-04-19T19:22:28","date_gmt":"2015-04-19T23:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bunewsservice.com\/Marathon2015\/?p=347"},"modified":"2015-04-20T07:17:50","modified_gmt":"2015-04-20T11:17:50","slug":"82-and-still-running","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bunewsservice.com\/Marathon2015\/82-and-still-running\/","title":{"rendered":"82 And Still Running"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"853\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/jB0X5rddejc\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>By Nikita Sampath &amp; Noelia Valero<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>BU News Service<\/em><\/p>\n<p>BOSTON\u00a0\u2014 On Saturday Jimmy Green drove down from Marblehead with his wife Michelle and dog, Panda, to pick up his bib number for what could be his last marathon. At 82, he is the oldest participant from Massachusetts this year.<\/p>\n<p>Last year he took nearly 5:30 to reach the finish line, but he has seen faster races before.<\/p>\n<p>In 1960, when the record in Boston was 2:20, he finished third with 2:23. \u201cTo maintain a good pace, you have to run at the edge of exhaustion for a long time,\u201d Green said.<\/p>\n<p>He had a great year in 1959\u00a0\u2014 he\u2019d gotten second in the Pan American games and won some other major races internationally \u2014 making him a favorite for the 1960 Boston Marathon. Coming in third gave him a foot in the door to making the Olympic team but, \u201cThe person I tied with, according to some rule, it put him on the Olympic team even though my record, my combined times for the two marathons, was much better than his. Still, he got the chance to go replacing me,\u201d Green said.<\/p>\n<p>For this year\u2019s race, Green trained for about six months, but found it challenging to find places to run in due to the horrendous winter. In Marblehead he found a hilly area to train on, but the 30-mile-per-hour winds there made it difficult for him to do his best.<\/p>\n<p>Since his retirement, Green now has more time to spend playing the piano and studying Russian. \u201cA few times a week I\u2019ll look at a Russian newspaper and try to learn new vocabulary,\u201d he said. \u201cOne day I learn four new words and the next day I forget three,\u201d he added with a laugh. \u201cI love Russian stuff. The Ukrainian crisis renewed my interest in that area.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Training younger runners is another thing he enjoys. \u201cYou try to get people interested in the sport because you\u2019ve done it your whole life,\u201d he said. However, he feels sorry because he hasn\u2019t been able to interest a decent number of novices or experienced runners. \u201cI feel like I have an extensive knowledge of the sport that can help many people improve greatly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Green\u2019s own coach, Jock Semple, was instrumental in getting him into the sport. \u201cAnybody that had contact with Jock became a much better runner because he made it seem worthwhile to run a race and to run well.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Today Green will be happy to make the finish line; records now are a thing of the past. But back in the day he was driven by something a lot less simple.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s something called fear that keeps you going, you don\u2019t wanna hear any footprints behind you. So you keep moving,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Nikita Sampath &amp; Noelia Valero BU News Service BOSTON\u00a0\u2014 On Saturday Jimmy Green drove down from Marblehead with his wife Michelle and dog, Panda, to pick up his bib number for what could be his last marathon. At 82, he is the oldest participant from Massachusetts this year. Last year he took nearly 5:30 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":443,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,12],"tags":[],"coauthors":[14],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thestories","category-video","post-with-thumbnail","post-with-thumbnail-large"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bunewsservice.com\/Marathon2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bunewsservice.com\/Marathon2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bunewsservice.com\/Marathon2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bunewsservice.com\/Marathon2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bunewsservice.com\/Marathon2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/bunewsservice.com\/Marathon2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":442,"href":"https:\/\/bunewsservice.com\/Marathon2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions\/442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bunewsservice.com\/Marathon2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bunewsservice.com\/Marathon2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bunewsservice.com\/Marathon2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bunewsservice.com\/Marathon2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bunewsservice.com\/Marathon2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}