After 45 years of friendship, Barb Tripp and Joy Saogas live together at Generations assisted living. The two are 102 and 94 respectively, but they don’t let their ages prevent them from having fun and exercising.
The pair walks together often, so they decided to sign up for Bloomsday Worldwide. Since the event was virtual, it allowed the duo to split up the race into mile-long chunks they walked each day.
It was not their first Bloomsday though.
“I’m trying to think what year it was that we started. I think Barb was in her 70’s and I in my 60’s,” Saogas said.
Her granddaughter, Becky Bearden, said the ladies ran their first Bloomsday back in 1987 or ’88. Bearden and her sister sparked the initial idea of the women running this year's Bloomsday.
And they didn’t do it alone. Bearden’s sister, Amy Joy, had a fourth-grade class at Orchard Center Elementary, where she works, register for the race as well. The kids ran several laps twice a day to reach the 7.46-mile cut-off.
“It’s fun and good exercise, and it’s also pretty fun to run with your friends,” Jacob Bevans, fourth-grade student at Orchard Center Elementary, said.
The students and ladies at Generations encouraged each other through the process.