by James Moreland

Though you cannot tell from her picture, Ruth Riemenschneider has reached that magical age of forty. It made her take a new look at her running. The race times are slower than in her prime with children and additional family activities. She has had to set many new goals. She has less time for cross training and has learned that as we get older we need more recovery time. Her husband Neil, still an elite runner in the master’s division, loves to run also, but jealously hordes time for other sporting activities. Still, with all the new challenges, a whole division to compete in, she now understands why Bill Rodgers and Frank Shorter made the push for master’s running.

Her background in sports started early as she was a competitive swimmer in the summer for eleven years. She biked everywhere in her community of Levittown, NY, so she was a natural for triathlons and biathlons. She was always trying to play sports. She was disappointed when she did not make the HS track team.

After getting married, her husband encouraged her to stay in shape. So she picked up "jogging." She describes her first 10K race as slow but she met her first modest goal of less than fifty minutes. What a thrill that she earned an age group award! They moved to Winchester, VA shortly after that and in her second race she finished second female. Now she was definitely hooked!

Ruth and Neil met some serious runners who taught them a great deal about training and racing and within a few months she was running sub forty 10K’s. During her peak years of running, Ruth was racing thirty-seven minute 10K’s, twenty-nine minute 5M and seventeen minute 5K’s. Running magazines throughout the area contained numerous mention of the Riemenschneider name. Often Neil would post an article and then have to think of a clever way to sound modest when both he and Ruth had won that race.

Ruth started racing every weekend and doubled up often. It was a challenge to run a race and zoom over to another race, or do a road race one day and a triathlon the next. Fortunately, she earned sponsorship from Reebok. That was quite a highlight. Later in time, both Ruth and Neil became sponsored by PowerBar and still are to this day. They fully believe in the product.

Racing was a family activity as Neil ran the races too. The kids came along and did fun runs or waited for some activity promised them on the way home. Ruth loves the whole racing atmosphere, and really enjoys the many wonderful people she has met while running. Still, training is rigorous. Customarily she is up at 5:00 a.m. and completes her runs by 7:00 a.m. She remains a morning runner as her children’s activities play a most important part in her life and usually make afternoons and evenings full. She was able to slip in a few years of biking and swimming in the late 80's and early 90's to do triathlons and biathlons and was very successful with those.

She has been listening more to her body now and trying to stay focused on workouts, being sure to put the right amount of energy into each. She has had to adjust to running induced asthma, but has had many years of running with only a few minor. Now she focuses on trying to look ahead and not back to what she used to run in the past. Ruth is very happy for the first nineteen years of serious competitive running and hopes to have many more as a master’s runner.