SOUTH PORTLAND – A South Portland woman in her 90s is gearing up for the annual TD Beach to Beacon road race this summer, and it’s not her first time.
Charlene Hagen, 94, is planning to take part as a walker in the six-mile charity event in Cape Elizabeth on Aug. 1, and organizers said she is the oldest person registered to take part in the race this year.
“I’m ‘in training,’ as they say,” she said with a smile on Tuesday.
Hagen will join more than 8,000 participants registered for the race. She has already participated as a walker in the race seven times and has a colorful collection of commemorative t-shirts to prove it.
A native of Kentucky, Hagen said she grew up during the Great Depression and never thought of herself as an athlete. She said she tried field hockey once and didn’t like it.
“I never did anything athletic in my life,” she said.
But then Hagen and her husband Kenneth moved to Cape Elizabeth in 1975. She said she remembered when Joan Benoit Samuelson first founded the annual race in 1998. At the time, she said, the race course ran just down the street from her house.
“We lived in the neighborhood that I could walk up to the end of the street and watch the race,” she said. “I thought it was fantastic. It just looked like so much fun.”
While Hagen walks, swims and stretches for exercise, she assumed since she could never keep pace with the runners that she wouldn’t ever be able to participate in the race herself. One year, she said, one of her grandchildren told her that the race organizers allow participants to walk as well.
“It never occurred to me that I could walk,” she said.
Hagen first participated as a walker in the race in 2018, at a spry 86 years old. She said she loved the feel-good vibe she got from the crowds on the sidelines.
“As I walked past St. Bartholomew’s Church where my neighborhood was, people were waving to me and calling out to me, and I thought, ‘This is really fun.’”
Hagen does take her physical health seriously. She walks at least two miles almost every day. Even in the winter, she goes to a community center in South Portland and walks the track – 12 circuits in a mile, she said.
Hagen estimated she can do the six-mile walk in about an hour and 45 minutes. She encouraged anyone, at any age, to consider taking part.
“Don’t be intimidated by it,” she said. “The professional runners and the really dedicated runners, they get out of your way, they’re gone, and then you’re walking along and it’s mostly a competition with yourself to make sure you can do it.”
The annual race starts outside the entrance to Crescent Beach State Park and runs to Fort Williams Park. The race is a favorite among local residents, which many people cheering the runners on, playing music and waving. That, Hagen said, is part of why she keeps coming back.
“It’s actually love,” she said. “You can just feel it on the sidelines.”