Jones Far From Over The Hill Spokane’s Elite Long-Distance Runner Still In Step

Since she turned 39 Friday it may seem appropriate to mention how gracefully Kim Jones is aging.

Appropriate, maybe, but a little off the mark.

Kim Jones isn’t aging at all.

On Sunday - only 13 days after taking ninth at the Boston Marathon - the Spokane mother of a high school sophomore could be the first woman to finish the 21st Lilac Bloomsday Run.

Some of the top competition isn’t that much older than her daughter.

While former Bloomsday men’s champ Jon Sinclair is written off as past his prime, Jones - like Sinclair only a year shy of the big four-oh - remains a threat.

Age has left Kim Jones pretty much alone, perhaps because she sidestepped the early wear and tear of a typical career. After a promising start in high school, she stopped running.

Grew up. Had a family. Eight years later, like others who dust off the shoes once a year, she decided to join the crowd at Bloomsday.

“After I had Jamie I wanted to run it from start to finish without stopping,” she said this week, with soft-spoken humor. “I did, and I couldn’t walk for a week.

“I was 26. After the race I was sitting on a curb. Somebody asked how I did. I started bragging - I had a baby a year and a half ago and hadn’t trained since high school. I was pretty happy with my time - I’d run it in fifty-some minutes.”

Jones said she finally, wearily, got around to asking how the other woman did.

“‘Oh, I won it,”’ Jones said the woman told her.

That’s how Kim Jones met Anne Audain.

“Sitting in a gutter,” Jones said. “That’s what she calls it. We’ve been good friends since. We still laugh at that, but I really started thinking about running when she said that if I was to train for the next Bloomsday I’d run a lot faster - and feel a lot better doing it.

“So I trained, placed high the next year - eighth maybe - and won some prize money.”

A dozen years later, she’s the third-fastest American women’s marathoner in history.

Jones has covered a lot of ground since she grew up running in the scenic Olympic Peninsula town of Port Townsend.

“In our family there were 11 brothers and sisters - and two bikes,” she said. “I had Bike Day once or twice a week if I was lucky. If I wanted to go anywhere I had to run alongside my brothers and sisters who did have Bike Day.

“We’d go to the beach or to a friend’s house or play baseball. I probably ran more than most kids, even those who’re training now, and without realizing it.”

She’s a believer in “undertraining” kids, partly because it worked for her. She might have set records in the competitive years she threw away, from her late teens to the mid-20s, but then again time may not have treated her as kindly.

“Maybe I’d be more used-up,” she said. “Running middle distances in a college program … there’s a lot of wear and tear.”

If every runner has only so much spring in the wheels, Jones has some left, having traded sooner for later.

“I’m sure, eventually, age comes into play, but I don’t feel any different than I did at 25 or 30,” she said. “I actually have fewer aches and pains. My training is better than it’s ever been. I really only have 12 years of wear and tear on my body, where Gladys Ondeyo (at 21, among the favorites here) has probably been running 10 years. Not competitively, maybe, but as many miles as I have.”

Another sustaining quality is her unorthodoxy. Jones says she takes care of herself, but indulges herself, too. Staying fresh, she calls it.

“Running is not my entire life,” she said. “I have a lot going on around me. It’s realizing that a bad race isn’t the end of the world, that I can come back and continue on.

“I wouldn’t be as competitive or anxious to run if I didn’t take care of myself, but I don’t back off calories or anything,” the 5-7, 115-pound Jones said. “I eat six times a day. Three big meals and snacks. I eat red meat. If I’m training hard enough, I’ll be light enough to race.”

She does go bland the day before a race, limiting herself to one plate of spaghetti.

“One big plate,” she said.

Stronger at 26 miles than 7, Jones rarely can settle into her optimum pace at Bloomsday, partly why her results here are mixed. Jones said she won’t be satisfied with fifth this year, as she finished in the previous two Bloomsdays, but, then, satisfied is an elusive target.

“I’m never pleased and I think that’s why I’m still running,” she said. “I want to improve. Fifth is good - I wouldn’t complain - but I’d like to do better.”

Jones is, in effect, between seasons. She’s a marathoner.

Important marathons come in April. Her next 26-miler isn’t until next fall.

“In marathoning, I can run at my comfort zone, which is about 80 percent,” she said. “In Bloomsday, I have to push it hard from the gun. I’m really at my anaerobic threshold. That’s when I get into trouble with the pollen - my breathing and the asthma. I’m cautious of that, which is why I’ve turned to marathons for so many years.

“I’ve been on some new medications and everything is under control now. So I’ll give it (Bloomsday) another try.

“I’ll go out with the leaders if the pace is reasonable. You have to pace yourself with hills in the middle of the course.

“Most of them (the elite runners) go out pretty quick. A lot of the Russians are very strong runners. They run a very consistent pace throughout the race. To work with all of that - the fast starters, the strong runners and the fast finishers - I have to go out hard, push it in the middle of the race and see that everybody gets a workout.”

Approaching an age when she could conceivably double in women’s open and women’s masters divisions, Jones outruns her daughter, Jamie Rosenquist, who competed at state last spring as a Lewis and Clark freshman.

Time will come when Mamma Jones - as some of the girls on the LC track team call her gives way to the next generation. For now, though, there’s no sign of slowing down.

“My ambition is to run a sub-2:25 marathon (her best is 2:26.40),” she said. “That’s what I plan to do, eventually.”

But pushing yourself to the threshold for 7-miles-plus before breakfast at 39. That’s fun? “It is if everything is going right,” Jones said, “if you feel good and there aren’t any problems along the way. That’s a dream race. That’s why I’ve been running so long.

“I keep hoping for that dream race.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Bloomsday odds Bloomsday founder Don Kardong’s odds for Sunday’s elite races. Men 1. Peter Githuka 3-1 2. Lazarus Nyakeraka 4-1 3. Jon Brown 4-1 4. Charles Mulinga 4-1 5. Hezron Otweri 6-1 6. Alphonce Muindi 8-1 7. John Kagwe 8-1 8. Sergie Jimenez 10-1 9. Salvador Parra 10-1 10. Teddy Mitchell 15-1 Women 1. Gladys Ondeyo 4-1 2. Kim Jones 5-1 3. Olga Egorova 5-1 4. Martha Tenorio 5-1 5. Carole Zajac 7-1 6. Sylvia Mosqueda 7-1 7. Alina Ivanova 8-1 8. Laura LaMena-Coll 10-1 9. Darlene Mota 12-1 10. Elena Burykina 15-1