Suzanne Ray

I spent last weekend at the home of Suzanne Ray. Suzanne is the holder of the American record for 55-59 year old women at the 30 kilometer distance.

While some of you may have read her story before, I hope to put a more personal touch on it.

L to R: Suzanne Ray, Joanna Harper & Jeannie Groesz.

I first met Suzanne during Memorial weekend in 2007. I was visiting the charming town of Ashland in order to see some plays at the well known Oregon Shakespeare Festival held there each year.

A friend of mine named Becky Hacker, who lives in town, had suggested that I might want to run in a low key four mile race that would start and finish a stone’s throw from my B&B on Saturday morning. I agreed to do so, and Becky and I made plans to meet before the race. When I saw Becky that morning she introduced me to Suzanne, telling me that she had recently moved to Southern Oregon. As we warmed up, we caught up on our recent lives and talked about the race. It turned out that Becky was the two time defending champ.

Despite spotting Becky almost twenty years in age, Suzanne took the lead early in the race as we climbed up a substantial incline that lead up into the hills surrounding the picturesque town. We had climbed several hundred feet by the time we reached half way. Becky pulled away from Suzanne over the downhill second half of the course to win going away. I managed to reel Suzanne in too, and I passed her twenty meters from the finish line.

Suzanne seemed momentarily deflated by the race’s outcome but recovered quickly as the three of us headed off for a cool down run. Becky had other plans for the next morning, but Suzanne and I agreed to meet for a longer run. It would be the first of many runs we would do together, and the story illustrates a point I’d like to make about her.

Suzanne is a very determined competitor, and in fact I may not have ever seen anyone who puts forth a greater effort in races. But she doesn’t hold any animosity towards those that she races against. She is very friendly and outgoing both before and after her races, regardless of the outcome.

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Suzanne grew up in Anchorage, Alaska; in the era before title nine was passed. There was little or no encouragement for young girls to engage in sports and Suzanne was not involved in any serious sporting activity in her youth.

However, when she went off to college at Western Washington State University in Bellingham, Washington, she took a swimming class and her outlook changed significantly. She found that she really enjoyed daily physical activity and looked around for a sport to make her own. She tried several before she discovered running, but once she started she was hooked.

She even started doing a little racing while she lived in Washington, but serious running would wait until later in life. She met Rick Ray when she was 25 and the relationship quickly blossomed. They were married within months of meeting and two years later had started a family. Rick and Suzanne have two daughters, named Bree and Mercy, who are now 31 and 29 respectively.

At this point I might want to interject that they are one of most attractive families I have ever met. There are some older pictures around their house in which Suzanne and Rick look like some Hollywood couple, and they both still look great at what is euphemistically called middle age. Her daughters are gorgeous too, and I’m sure they attract a lot of attention in the small southern Oregon community in which they live.

Back in Alaska, Suzanne put more effort into training and racing once the girls got a little older. She became well known in local running circles, and she qualified for the 1992 Olympic marathon trials at age 39. The trials opened her eyes and she realized that she had the potential to be more than just a local success.

Her timing was perfect. Master’s running was becoming increasingly prominent in the early nineties. Suzanne thinks the Old Kent River Bank run was her first foray into the realm of elite running. Race director Greg Meyer invited her to the race and she walked away with a check as the top master’s runner. The money she won helped supplement the family income but created some stress too. She said that she has never felt more worried about a race than when she knew that they could really use the money.

She won lots of accolades during this period including Runner’s World master’s runner of the year. All of her PRs date from her early forties as well, including the 2:40:42 marathon she ran at the Twin Cities Marathon in 1993. She ran 34:58 for 10K and 1:18:00 for a half marathon. However, the hard reality of master’s fame is that there are always younger runners who are moving into the ranks, and soon enough her star dimmed somewhat. However, she has continued to run at a high level as she has gotten older.

Suzanne had earned a masters degree at the University of Alaska and worked as a teacher there for several years. In 2000 she was lured to the lower 48 to become the track and cross country coach at Bethel University in Minnesota. For the most part she enjoyed the job but it was hard on her family life. Rick had become a serious paragliding pilot and the Midwest offers few opportunities for this pursuit.

Thus, in 2006 she returned to teaching, accepting a position with a small Christian school in Medford, Oregon. Suzanne teaches English and Spanish there, and in our conversations it is clear that she is passionate about teaching. Suzanne believes that people should earn their way in life, and she laments the fact that there is pressure to “dumb down” her lessons. I’m certain that she is one of those teachers whom you think are too hard when you have them, but then you appreciate more, later in life.

Suzanne is very well read, and if there is a television in the Ray household, I’ve yet to see it. Everyone in the family walks around with a book in their hands and the level of conversation is always high. Suzanne enjoys theater too, and we schedule a play or two every time I go down to visit her. I very much look forward to spending time with her and her family.

Suzanne is of course still running. She won an individual gold in the 55-59 division at the 2008 USATF Club Cross Country championships over the frozen tundra in Spokane. She also took home a team bronze in the 50-59 division in the same race. I was honored to be her team mate on that day. I think the weather gods decided to make her feel like she was still in Alaska as that was the coldest I’ve ever been while racing.

2009 was a good year for her as she ran a 1:30:57 half marathon and a 2:11:57 30K that fall. The latter was good for an American age group record. In 2010 she won individual silver and team bronze at the USA masters 5K cross country championships. She doesn’t seem to be slowing down as she ran a 1:10:16 effort for 10 miles on the deceptively challenging Pear Blossom course in Medford while I was visiting her. This matches her best time on the course.

Suzanne will turn 59 in a few weeks, and she still runs 12 miles or more almost every day. When I was there she ran the 10 mile race on Saturday, did a twelve mile run on Sunday morning and joined Mercy and me for a pool workout Sunday afternoon. Not only did she join us the workout, she set the pace for it. We did an interval type effort, and Suzanne was definitely in charge.

There are those who would describe her dedication as compulsive. While it can be difficult to draw a line between the two, I would place her behavior on the healthy side of the line. One reason I would make that claim is that her friends feel comfortable teasing her about her habits. I was running with Suzanne and some of her friends on a previous visit, and one of the gals joked that she would be wearing holes in the carpet of her nursing home, pushing her walker around and chanting “I’ve got to get my twelve miles in.”

In just over a year’s time, Suzanne will turn 60, and she has to be looking forward to moving into the age group. While she has the misfortune to be almost exactly the same age as Kathy Martin, she should still be a dominant force at the longer end of the distance spectrum. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more age group records and national championships in her future.

It kind of puts a new spin on the term “golden age”, doesn’t it?

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