At 77, Jeannie Rice holds marathon world records and has the highest VO2 max ever recorded for a woman over 75
Most people slow down after 70. Jeannie Rice is speeding up.
At 77 years old, she holds marathon world records in the W70 and W75 age categories, and a landmark 2025 study found she has the highest VO2 max ever recorded for a woman aged 75 or older.
That number puts her aerobic engine on par with an average 25-year-old woman. Her story is not about genetics alone.
It is about four decades of stubborn consistency, and the daily habits behind it are things you can actually copy.
Jeannie Rice was born in South Korea in 1948 and moved to Mentor, Ohio as a teenager to study nursing.
he later worked as a real estate agent before easing into semi-retirement.
She did not start running until she was 35 years old. The reason was almost comically ordinary.
She had gained a few pounds on a vacation to South Korea, and she wanted to lose them.
That was the entire plan.
"I was hoping to drop the five pounds I had gained on a recent vacation," she told Marathon Handbook in a 2024 interview.
Forty years later, she has finished more than 130 marathons, beaten every male runner in her age group multiple times, and become a World Marathon Majors six-star finisher.
Rice did not start winning big until she turned 60. She started setting world records at 70.
At the Berlin Marathon in 2019, she ran 3:24:48, a W70 age-group world record that still stands.
In 2023, three days after her 75th birthday, she ran 3:33:15 at Boston to take the W75 marathon world record.
She has also set world age-group records at 1,500 meters, 5,000 meters, and 10,000 meters. That range is almost unheard of at any age.
"How do you get faster than a world record?" she told Marathon Handbook, when asked why she still trains without a coach.
In April 2024, Rice traveled to Loughborough University in Britain for a full physiology exam.
The results made headlines around the running world.
Her VO2 max registered at 47.8, published in a 2025 case report in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
That is the highest ever recorded for a woman aged 75 or older. For context, that same score is average for a healthy 25-year-old woman.
Her max heart rate came in at 180 beats per minute, another number that reads more like a college athlete than a 77-year-old. Interestingly, her running economy tested as unremarkable.
In other words, she is not naturally efficient
She is naturally, and stubbornly, powerful.
If you strip away the medals and the science, Rice's routine is stunningly simple.
Here is what she actually does, week in and week out.
Rice logs roughly 50 miles per week, every week. When a major marathon is on the horizon, she pushes it closer to 60 miles.
She fits four or five long runs of 20 miles into every marathon build. The training block, in her words, has not changed in 40 years.
"A lot of other runners decrease their training as they get older. But I haven't done that," she said. That is the whole secret.
Rice goes to the gym twice a week for light strength training. She only trains her upper body.
Her reasoning is practical. Her legs already get plenty of work from 50 miles of running, so the gym exists to keep the rest of her body strong.
She also enjoys the rowing machine, aqua-jogging, downhill skiing, and golf. Cross training, for her, is anything that is not another running session.
Rice is a lifelong pescetarian. Her go-to meal is a salad with roasted salmon.
She grew up on fresh fish, vegetables, and rice, and that is still how she eats. She avoids sweets, drinks wine occasionally, and does not chase trendy diets.
Her weight has hovered between 100 and 103 pounds for four decades. She does not track macros or count calories.
Rice has never had a coach. She joined the North Cleveland Runners Club 41 years ago and picked up almost everything she knows from running alongside other members.
Her regular training partners today are women in their mid to late 50s. Twenty years younger than her, and she keeps up just fine.
"They say I'm inspiring them. I say that they're keeping me young. It's good for all of us," she said.
Rice has suffered exactly one running injury in more than 40 years, and it came from tripping and banging her knee. She does not credit anything mystical for that.
"I don't think much about my age. It's just a number," she told Marathon Handbook.
That mindset shows up in her goals. She is already planning to compete in the 80 to 84 division, with the Masters World Championships in Korea firmly in her sights.
You do not need a freakish VO2 max to apply the Jeannie Rice playbook. Most of her success comes down to habits any runner can borrow.
The core lessons are simple. Do not cut back your mileage just because a birthday says you should.
Keep some strength work in the mix. Eat mostly whole, unprocessed food, and stay close to your natural weight.
And find people to run with. Even the world's fastest 77-year-old still leans on her running club.
If you are new to running later in life, that first step matters most. Our guide on how to start running at 50 and beyond walks you through the safe, gradual on-ramp Rice never needed but most people do.
Rice is not the only late-life record breaker rewriting what aging looks like on the track.
Italian sprinter Emma Maria Mazzenga set a W90 world record in the 200 meters at 91, and she is still chasing faster times.
Together, they are proof of something the science keeps confirming. Endurance and speed do not have to fall off a cliff after 60, or 70, or even 80.
What tends to fall off is consistency. Rice never let hers slip.
She started running to lose five pounds. She ended up rewriting what the human body can do at 77.
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