Runner will keep 'flying'

Judy Bullough started running before there were running magazines or specialized running shoes. She started running before people understood the benefits of exercise and before running itself became a multimillion-dollar business.

It was her husband, Dale's, suggestion that the working mom take up jogging as a way to deal with stress. That first run was through the neighborhood and around the local church house.

"I was hooked," said Bullough, as she made her way through the pouring rain and chilly wind of Saturday's St. George Marathon. "This is my last St. George ... I promised my family this would be it."

The 76-year-old crossed the finish line in five hours and 51 minutes. It took her an hour longer than last year. The weather was a factor, but so was the fact that she'd fallen a month ago and badly injured her face.

"She was black and blue," said 54-year-old ReNae Orton, who runs with Bullough in the Generation Gap running club. "Her lips looked like hamburger."

Her doctors wouldn't let her run Logan's Top of Utah two weeks ago, but they couldn't talk her out of her beloved St. George. She started the race holding onto the arm of one of her friends for the first mile or so until the sun came up. It was those arms that held her again when she crossed the St. George finish line for the last time. But it wasn't just the fear of falling again that had Bullough feeling more grounded than normal as she ran the scenic 26.2 miles. She lost a family member in a tragic car accident recently, and she said it had been a devastating blow.

"Those two things just left me feeling a little ... crazy," she said. So Judy Bullough did what she has always done when life dishes up sadness or stress or disappointment — she got up early in the morning, met her friends and ran.

Her finish around 1 p.m. might have seemed an insignificant crossing, but it was in its own, unique way, the most glorious finish of them all. She had a laundry list of excuses to stay home Saturday and even her running buddies wouldn't have blamed her.

But what's a little fear, a little rain, a little grief and a little hill they call Veyo when you have the chance to fly?

"The best aspect is the way it makes you feel," she said. "You have a sense of freedom. You run and the air, the smells, the sky ... You almost feel like a bird — like you're flying through nature. We have so many obligations as people, but especially as women. But you get out there and you're just flying. It's the most exhilarating feeling. I feel sorry for the people who don't get to feel it."

And then, of course, there are those other birds one meets while soaring.

"They solve each others' problems while we're running," she said. "It's a marvelous hobby. We need the camaraderie; we share each others' thoughts, but the problems, we don't carry them back home with us. We leave them out there on the road."

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