Retired steelworker, 81, sets world age-group record for 10km in Leeds

Maureen Holroyd, 81, ran 10km through the streets of Leeds on Sunday morning in 49 minutes and 47 seconds, a world record for a woman in the over-80 age group and a time that would have placed her in the top third of the 9,000-strong field had she been 50 years younger.

Holroyd, a retired steelworker from Rotherham who did not run a step until she was 67, took 34 seconds off the previous record, which had stood since 2019. She crossed the line, by her own account, “not feeling too bad”, and then had to be told by a race official what she had done, because she had not been wearing a watch.

“I never run with a watch, it makes you panic,” she said. “I just run as hard as I can without being sick and see what the clock says. I had a feeling it was a good one because a lot of young men had been overtaking me very slowly, which is usually a sign.”

Holroyd started running after a hip replacement in 2012, when her surgeon, she said, told her to walk every day and she “got bored of walking”. She joined a running club in Rotherham at 68, ran her first 10km at 69 and has run 11 marathons, the most recent in April at 80, in 4:12. She trains six days a week, runs about 35 miles a week and has, her club says, never missed a Tuesday session for illness.

“She is the best-known member of this club by a mile and she is 40 years older than the next most famous,” said Dave Sunderland, who coaches the club’s veterans group. “People come down for the first time because they have read about her. Then they find out she will drop them on the hills.”

World age-group records in road running are maintained by the Association of Road Racing Statisticians and must be set on courses that have been measured and certified, which the Leeds course has. The race organisers said they had submitted the result and the course certificate on Sunday afternoon and expected ratification within six weeks.

Holroyd said the record was “a nice thing” but that she had been more pleased with the 6.5-mile run she had done home from the shops on Wednesday with a bag of potatoes. Asked whether she would try to break the record again, she said she would “probably have to, because somebody will come along and take it, and I am not having that”.

She intends to run the Leeds race again next year, when she will be 82. The club has already entered her.