Who is Sue Krenn??? – San Diego Track Club

Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it. (Rabindranath Tagore)

Sue Krenn earned her life. Sue was a generous and kind woman who was passionate about her friends, her running community and her own running and training.

Sue gave to her friends by sharing workouts and competition with them, by socializing with them when the workouts were over, by remembering them with gifts and letters from her travels all over the world. She gave to her running community by enthusiastically supporting her running peers, in part, by being the race director of the San Diego Track Club’s 15K race in Mission Bay. She gives to us who never knew her by her example of an ardent, consistent and disciplined woman, friend and runner.

Sue was passionate about training and did so with great vigor and focus. As a young woman, she began studying ballet and learned the discipline of a training routine. She later became a rower and qualified as a member of the second string United States Olympic Rowing Team. Later still, she became a runner and marathoner. Sue became a runner later in life than most others do who achieve what she did.

Sue trained hard. One Friday afternoon, she joined San Diego Track Club member Donna Gookin’s training group for the first time. Donna remembers that Sue began her running career as a big and slow runner. Sue had been rowing a lot and had the physique to prove it. SDTC member Dale Sutton challenged her to an arm wrestling match that afternoon and, though he won that contest, he did not win many more contests with Sue. The run that Friday afternoon was rainy and muddy – ten miles of mud. Sue persisted; she was determined to do ten miles. She did.

Donna suggested to Sue that she begin her training as a runner with the beginner or intermediate runners of Donna’s running group, but Sue was determined to train with the advanced runners. She would start the workouts with the faster runners, would get left behind but would keep on running hard anyway. Her enthusiasm for the workouts carried over into the group’s post workout dinners in Tia Juana.

Sue gradually became a faster runner and began winning races. Bill Siebold introduced Sue to Dr. Hal Goforth. Bill brought Sue to Hal’s house so that Hal could show her how to use glue (silicon) on her running shoes to get extra mileage out of them. Hal and Sue began talking about running. Since Hal was running and racing well and was pursuing his education in Exercise Physiology, they thought that they were a good match for training and racing together and so they began.

Dr. Goforth remembers that Sue loved training. She trained with men because she could not find other women “who would train that hard or long and still be fast enough. There were other women runners in San Diego at that time that were faster, but she was determined and believed in the methods we were using and followed my schedule to the T.” Many days Sue would run between school and home to be sure that she got in enough mileage. Hal remembers, “We did heat training (before most runners even knew what it was). We did long runs (as did everyone) but we did a long tempo [run] every Saturday on a 1.5-mile loop course and learned even pacing at close to race level effort. We also did long intervals either on the roads or track. The whole schedule was progressive and, as we adapted to one level, we increased the distance [at which] we could hold the pace. There were at least five other runners at that time that would train together with this schedule. They all have done very well. Lorrie Dierdorf joined us and later qualified for the Olympic Trials. She and Sue both had PR Marathons of 2:38 which, in the late 70’s and early 80’s, was quite good.”

During the time Sue was training with Dr. Goforth, she ran her best marathon time, 2:38, and placed third among the women competitors in the 1978 Boston Marathon. Hal ran with her partway that day; they were right behind Joan Benoit and would catch Joan on the down hills, but would lose ground on the up hills. Hal wanted Sue to have the experience of the final miles alone, so at the eleven-mile mark, he told her that she was on her own. He vividly remembers finding her after the finish and how she ran up, hugged him, and started jumping up and down while saying “I got third!”

Sue raced hard. In 1979, Sue ranked seventh in the US in the women’s marathon. SDTC member Kendall Webb ran in some races with Sue and remembers her “incredibly hard and loud foot snap when her foot hit the ground with each stride”. Sue ran marathons in San Francisco (1978), Boston (1978), Seoul, Korea (1982), Vancouver, British Colombia (1982), and Venezuela (1984). She finished all of these marathons, except the one in Venezuela, in less than 3 hours. And she was, for a time, the women’s US national record holder at the 50K distance.

Sue was an enthusiastic supporter of her running community. She was a member of the San Diego Track Club and was the race director for the Track Club’s Mission Bay 15K race that has been renamed in her memory.

Sue was a Spanish teacher and went to South America to teach. She hiked in the Andes and ran. In 1984 she competed in the Venezuela Marathon and placed third among the women. A few days after running in that marathon, she wrote Dr. Goforth a card about having gone scuba diving off Bonaire Island in the Dutch Antilles north of Venezuela. She went back there to dive again the day she wrote that postcard. Sue Krenn died during the dive.

Dr. Goforth said about Sue – “There was only one Sue Krenn and I haven’t seen anyone come close. She was compassionate, especially for children; she was overly generous (gave gifts to everyone, from all over the world); she was tough as nails (she contracted amoebic dysentery in Columbia, she was chased by a man with a knife there while she was on a run); she never compromised her morals or beliefs; she didn’t think too highly of herself (she gave away all her trophies and awards); she knew that hard work paid off and was willing to pay whatever the price to achieve a goal; she loved adventure and challenges (she traveled everywhere she could and once fell hundreds of feet in an avalanche in South America); she kept her friends in her life wherever she lived or traveled. She lived a richer, fuller, more generous and memorable life in 34 years than 99.9999% of Americans will in their lifetime.”

The race t-shirt for the Sue Krenn 15K has a silhouette of Sue on the front and a “No Wussies” symbol on the back. Dr. Goforth remembers when Sue would use the term “wussie” – “It was a comment she used when someone may say something about the workout suggesting fatigue or [disappointment with] the conditions (i.e., wind or rain). She would say “come on … don’t be a wussie!” So Hal put the word “WUSSIE” on the race t-shirt inside a circle with a diagonal line through it. Hal was the race director for the Sue Krenn 15K for ten years and one year, race day was a day of stiff winds and persistent rain, and Donna Gookin said to him, “Sue is looking down on us and saying, “Come on … don’t be wussies!”

On the day of the Sue Krenn 15K, you will run along a sparkling sea in San Diego’s Mission Bay. You will be where Sue would be and is. You will be what she was – a runner, a competitor, and a member of a running fraternity that is richer and fuller for the participation of us all.

Thank you, Sue.

C Evans, March 2005, with sincere thanks to Dr. Hal Goforth, Donna Gookin, Dale Sutton, Brian Williams, and Kendall Webb.

Postscript, December 2005
Sue Krenn is buried in a Catholic cemetery on the island of Bonaire in the southern Caribbean. Thanks to Harrie Cox, Tish Dance, Brian Williams and Ray LaFleur. Mr. LaFleur posted some photos of Sue partway down this Bonaire Talk Discussion Group message board thread.

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