Still climbing mountains

Some people are just built differently.

Mt. Charleston is a 12,000-foot peak in southern Nevada, a challenge Anne Nauman just couldn’t resist. That kind of determination did not appear overnight.

Nauman grew up in an era when competitive sports weren’t really available to women. Raised on a fruit farm in eastern Long Island, New York, in the 1940s, her primary exercise came in climbing trees, racing around the woods and playing active games like Red Rover.

“I always loved running but there were never any organized sports at that time in high school and college,” Nauman said. “That was before Title IX.”

It wasn’t just school sports that didn’t welcome female participation. That attitude carried over to competitions like running. Not only were there no women-only races, but she couldn’t even find running shoes designed for her. She had to wear men’s running shoes packed with moleskin to keep them from slipping.

Nauman picked up running in her 40s while working at a research lab. It started innocently enough, driven by the competitive streak within her.

“A lot of the men there would run during their lunch breaks, and every year they had a race around the perimeter of the lab,” Nauman said. “This was Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island. It covered a big area, so it was about 10 miles around. I noticed every year that there were never any women running and I was really annoyed and decided we had to get a woman out there, so I started running.”

That desire to show men — most of whom were in their 20s and 30s — that women could run was part of her motivation. She also ran because of the fitness benefits.

“I had a hard time recovering from the only serious operation I've ever had,” she said. “I was just feeling really out of shape after I recovered and I decided that running, at least trying it, would be some way to get myself back in shape.”

Despite the lack of a women’s division in competitive races during the 1980s, Nauman competed in about 100 races while she was running. Most were 10Ks or 10-mile races.

“I was a serious runner for a long time, but I was never very fast because I was older,” Nauman said. “This is mostly back in the 80s when everybody who was running were really serious runners, very different from the way it is now. Nowadays it's just kind of a fun party type deal, but in those days, it was serious stuff.”

And that competitive drive eventually carried her to one of her proudest accomplishments: Mt. Charleston.

Nauman and her husband, Chuck, lived in the Las Vegas area for 36 years before moving to Las Cruces in 2023. Beginning on her 65th birthday, Nauman celebrated every birthday by climbing the 12,000-foot peak. She kept up the tradition until she turned 80.

For her, that’s what a birthday party looked like.

Her greatest triumph on the mountain had come five years earlier. There was an 18-mile trail race to the Mt. Charleston peak and back down — from 7,800 feet to 12,000, a 4,000-foot elevation gain.

“That was one of my favorite races,” Nauman said. “I only did it twice, when I was 60 and 61. I was the first woman down the second time I did it.”

Looking back, Nauman believes her love of running may have started long before she ever entered a race.

An uncle who lived with her family had been a star distance runner at Michigan State University. His love for the sport came through the stories he told of the legendary runners of the 1920s and ’30s.

“I had grown up hearing about running,” she said. “My uncle was really good. He was always talking about running, so I knew all about Glenn Cunningham, and who's going to do the first four-minute mile and, and Paavo Nurmi, and all of that. I just grew up hearing all about running, so it was kind of in my head. I just thought I would try it and, and I enjoyed it, and while I was not terribly good at it, not very fast, I really did enjoy it.”

Nauman ran 10 marathons and even competed in a couple of biathlons, running and shooting. Her first marathon was New York City at age 51, an event she ran twice. At 61, she had her best marathon performance, delivering a time that qualified her for the prestigious Boston Marathon.

But her memories of Boston are bittersweet.

“The trouble is it was not my best marathon,” she said. “It was actually my worst.”

For most of her competitive running career, Nauman dealt with the same thing she had faced all along — first, the lack of other women to compete against and later, the lack of women her age.

“I did have several women friends out there, but all of them were 20 years younger than me,” Nauman said. “There's never anybody my age and when I first started racing, there was one category for women. There were no age categories, just a women’s category. Then they started adding age categories, but it was very unusual when they added an over-40 and they called it masters running. It was for anybody over 40.”

These days, Nauman has traded distance running for a different kind of competition.

She will celebrate her 99th birthday in October. After moving to Las Cruces three years ago, she turned her energy to power walking — speed walking in a more upright position, taking relatively small, quick steps while propelling herself by driving her elbows.

Nauman did not know anything about the sport until she moved to New Mexico, saw something in the Bulletin and went to the track where the Dona Ana Senior Olympics were being held.

“I just watched the power walking and thought I can do that,” she said. “The following year there was an opportunity for some instruction and some practice lessons with Betty Burgess. She's a terrific lady. She and Mary Jordan, they're really great. I learned how to do it from them, and then that year, in 2024, I competed in the Dona Ana County Senior Olympics and also in the state senior Olympics, which fortunately was here in Las Cruces.”

This will be Nauman’s third year competing in the Games. But while she still cannot help trying to pass anyone in front of her, it’s more about the camaraderie. There remains one familiar problem, however: no one in her age category.

“I really wish there were more older women out there,” Nauman said. “I'm hoping in Las Cruces somebody might pop up to give me a little competition and a little company. The next oldest person, I think, was something like 84, so I'm just out there by myself.”

Some things, it seems, haven’t changed.

It is not like the days in Nevada, when she lived on the northwest edge of the Las Vegas Valley and for 36 years did her walking on that 12,000-foot mountain snowcapped half the year, but exercise remains a major part of Nauman’s life.

“I don't have that much energy every day,” she said. “There are days when I feel my age, but I like to keep going and my husband too. We do all this together. He's 10 years younger than I am, he's going to be 89 next month but he's still in really great shape.”

The same thing that got Nauman running decades ago is still there to keep her moving today.

“It just feels good. That’s why I enjoyed running. It just feels good,” she said.