The record-breaking South African granny running at 90

Deirdre Larkin has become a local legend in her hometown of Randburg, Johannesburg, for starting to run at the age of 78. 

The hobby became a driving force for Larkin, and today, at the age of 93, she continues to stay active daily, though her successful marathon career has now slowed down.

Born on Heritage Day, 24 September 1932, Larkin moved to South Africa from Britain in 1970. Never much of an athlete, concert pianist Larkin was born with a missing vertebra. 

In 2009, at the age of 77, she was diagnosed with osteoporosis. She was told her condition was not treatable with medication or injections. 

“My doctor suggested I have an operation,” Larkin told The Citizen. She had previously had surgery to straighten her spine after the birth of her second child.

The surgery was hard on her, even in her thirties. Larkin said in an interview with Discovery that she couldn’t lift a teacup for three months. 

Larkin refused to let her body deteriorate. She started exploring yoga and pilates, but admitted she didn’t enjoy them much. 

 “Before I turned 78, the last time I ran was in college, and I was really bad,” Larkin said in an interview with Goodthingsguy.

“I spent my whole life sitting down playing piano. I used to hate cross-country at school, I would just stand at the goalposts until it was over,” Larkin told The Randburg Sun

However, when she took up running again, she quickly became an impressive record breaker. 

Larkin’s sun, Richard Larkin, persuaded her to join him on a Valentine’s Day run, and from then on, she was hooked. 

“When I started, I was walking three steps, running three steps, walking three steps,” she recalled. 

But in just seven years, she became an impressive runner. In 2013, she broke her first record for women over 70.

Breaking records in her 80s

By 2019 she was running 60 marathons a year. “Sometimes I get two medals,” she admitted, “because I don’t just win my age category.”

She’d amassed over 500 medals by this point and has become a local celebrity at both of the running clubs she has been a part of: Randburg Harriers and Run Zone.

Larkin holds the 10km world record for her age category, at 54:17. She broke the 21km world record with 02:12:37 in 2017, but later that same year, she broke her own record in Geneva with a time of 02:05:13.

To stay in shape, Larkin had a strict routine of waking up at 5 am every day for training. She took an 8km course around her neighbourhood. She has cut sugar, salt, coffee and meat out of her diet. 

This, for Larkin, was not a sacrifice. “I love getting up in the morning and having the whole world to myself at a run. When you run with people, they are always marvellous people, and you make friends,” she said. 

Larkin admitted that it is not easy to take up regular exercise as an octogenarian, but she encourages others to do so too. 

“There’s always an element of disbelief. I can’t believe I’ve done it. But my body tells me the next day, I certainly did it,” she said.

It’s worth it, she adds, for the positive effects that running has on her overall mood. 

“You can start by walking,” she encourages. “Any form of exercise can help, and you can walk at any speed; you don’t have to run.”

She lamented that too many people retire at 60 and sit down to knit all day long. 

According to a recent research paper, key Medicine for Longevity, runners have a 30% to 50% reduced risk of cancer-related mortality and a 45% to 70% lower risk of cardiovascular-related mortality. 

Larkin believes in the age-old saying “use it or lose it.” “Keeping moving is vital to life,” she said.

“I frequently hear people saying, ‘I can’t do …” To me, this seems as though they have never even tried gently to ‘do’”