Portenski honoured

Bernie Portenski’s daughter will run her first marathon at the Rotorua Marathon this weekend to finish the journey her running legend of a mother started.

Portenski was training for her 34th consecutive Rotorua Marathon in 2016 when she collapsed in pain. Instead of running the marathon three days later, she was fighting for her life against ovarian cancer. She died in February last year, aged 67.

This year, her daughter Marie-Jo (MJ) and a clan of cousins, aunts and uncles will run the marathon to complete the unfinished business for Bernie. It was a plan hatched in Mary Potter Hospice in Wellington, where Bernie spent the last weeks of her life.

Bernie was excited about finally getting MJ into running and wanted the family to raise funds for the hospice.

‘‘I always said to her, ‘Mum the day that you can’t run Rotorua, I will do it for you’. I needed something for her to get excited about, even though she wasn’t going to be here for it.

‘‘I never was a runner. She was trying so hard to get me out. It was definitely her passion.’’

Until now, the furthest MJ has run was 10km – but she has been in and around her mum for some of her biggest runs. In 1990, Bernie ran the Rotorua Marathon when she was four months’ pregnant with MJ.

Bernie was the most unlikely of sporting heroes. A hairdresser and selfproclaimed party girl, she took up running at 30 in 1980, quitting smoking to train for a marathon, then discovering she had a talent for it.

So started a journey which led to qualification for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, her proudest moment in sport (followed by one of lowest – the selectors did not pick her, deeming her too old at 42). She broke world age group records, and won marathons worldwide.