Time marches on but I just keep going says 102-year-old Ida Keeling

Ida Keeling is just 4-foot-6, weighs 83 pound and is 102-years-old. Ida rides an exercise bike, lifts weights, and runs up and down the hallways of her apartment building or on a treadmill. Her daughter, Shelley, is the one who actually got her to start running – at the age of sixty-seven after some incredible hardships. They ran a 5K that year and Ida says, "I thought that race was never going to end...however I felt so good (afterward) and have been running ever since." In 2011 she set a 60 meters world record of 29.86 seconds in her 95 year-old age group. At 99-years-old (in 2014), Ida set the fastest known time for a woman of her age in the 100-meter-dash posting 59.80. In 2016: 100-year-old Ida Keeling became the first woman in history to complete the 100-meter dash in one minute 17 seconds. Shelley could not be prouder of her mother. “The biggest thing with my mom," says Shelley, "is that she never lets anything get her down. If somebody said to her, ‘I’m going to put you in a box and you’re never going to get out,’ she’s say, ‘Just you wait.’” “You see so many older people just sitting around," says Ida, "well, that’s not me. Time marches on, but I keep going.”

posted Thursday March 15th
Inspirational Stories