San Jose Woman, Oldest To Run NYC Marathon, Dies After Falling At Race
NEW YORK (CBS SF) - A San Jose woman who was the oldest female to run the New York City Marathon has died one day after completing the race.
86-year-old Joy Johnson - who finished the NYC marathon for the 25th time – fell during the race, hitting her head on the pavement around the 20th mile. She was bandaged up but refused further treatment, her sister told the New York Daily News.
On Monday, Johnson had just wrapped up her annual post-marathon interview on NBC's Today Show when she told her family she was tired and went to lay down at her Manhattan hotel room and never woke up, according to the Daily News.
The city medical examiner's office said Tuesday that Johnson died of complications of blunt trauma.
Johnson had been the oldest woman running the New York City Marathon since 2011 and had run more than 70 marathons altogether, making quilts from all of her race shirts, according to Runner's World.
She told Runner's World in 2011 "I'm just very lucky and blessed and do what I love. I'm also a positive person, which helps. Nothing gets me down. I have to live up to my name."
Johnson often said she wanted to die running, according to published reports.
"She went out happy," her daughter Diana Boydston told the Wall Street Journal Tuesday. "She couldn't have asked for more than that, except maybe a few more years."
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