USA TODAY International Edition
At almost 80, a 5K daily for three years
We ‘ don’t know the depths of our strengths’
NEAR VIAN, Okla. – On a wooded butte overlooking a small lake, Mae Dean Erb stops.
It’s something she rarely does. The hiking path has come to a steep, rocky decline.
“Even if I slide down,” she says, “don’t worry about me.”
With that, she starts down the decline. There is no sliding. There is no slipping. She covers the tricky section of the trail with ease.
Never mind that she is almost 80 years old.
“I’m sure I act 80 in some ways,” she says as she traverses the trails around Lake Vian not far from her home in Blackgum, Oklahoma.
“But I don’t feel 80. I wish I could get people to realize even a minimal amount of working out … it just has a wonderful effect.”
Every day for three years she has run or walked at least a 5K. That’s 3.1 miles, and Friday marked the three- year anniversary of the start of her streak, a healthy habit born out of the early days of the COVID- 19 pandemic. She crossed the 1,000- day mark this month.
Multiple news outlets have picked up her story, but she laughs at the suggestion that she’s famous or has gone viral.
But the idea that she’s an inspiration? That’s not something she laughs off.
“If there’s anything that I wish would come of ( the attention), it would be that,” she said, “because most of us, let’s face it, don’t know the depths of our strengths.”
A lifelong learner
Mae Dean Johnson grew up in a house with no electricity, no running water, no telephone.
But it was a house that valued education. Neither of her parents had gone to school beyond eighth grade, but they taught Mae Dean, her sister and her two brothers about all sorts of things. Plants. Trees. Food preparation. Their Cherokee heritage.
She graduated from high school in Vian, a little over two hours east of Oklahoma City, when she was only 16. She earned her teaching degree from what was then Northeastern State College in Tahlequah when she was only 20.
She taught school in Nevada and in Japan before she and her husband, Jim Erb, settled in El Reno, where she taught gifted students for more than 20 years.
When she retired from teaching 20 years ago and moved back to Blackgum, the unincorporated community where she had grown up, she struggled. It was tough not being in the classroom. It was difficult not being around kids.
So she joined Wings, a program overseen by the Cherokee Nation. It promotes healthy living, and one of its centerpieces is a schedule of 5Ks all over the northeastern part of the state.
‘ I didn’t jump into this’
Erb started going to the gym, running and doing the 5Ks. About five years ago, she did a marathon.
She was 74.
“My family was so scared,” she said. But she told them: “You guys, I didn’t jump into this. I’ve been preparing for this for four months.”
Even though she had gotten back into teaching – she works with English language learners in the Webbers Falls School District in addition to teaching classes about origami and storytelling, two of her other passions – she continued staying active.
Then, COVID- 19 hit.
An idea ‘ as if the sun came up’
Erb doesn’t take credit for the idea of running a 5K every day.
She saw a Facebook post from Isaac Barnoskie, public health educator with Cherokee Nation Public Health. He said he planned to do a 5K a day amid the shutdowns. He had time on his hands.
“It was as if the sun came up,” Erb said.
She did her first 5K on March 24, 2020, figuring she would try to do one for 10 days straight. But she got to 10 days and felt so good, she decided to keep going. She got to 300, then 500, then 700.
Now, she’s over 1,000 days. There was only one time the streak nearly ended. She had visited her sister, who lives in Lubbock, Texas, and was driving eight hours home. On the way, she decided to make a stop in El Reno.
“I got back at like ... 11 o’clock at night, and my ‘ dreadmill’ was the only alternative,” she said, using her nickname for her treadmill.
But she got in the miles.
The journey, not the destination
Still on that butte overlooking the lake, Erb mentions the poem “Ithaka.” “Do you know it?” she asks. Written by Constantine P. Cavafy, the century- old work is based on Odysseus’ journey home. It talks about difficult times, about disappointments in life. But it encourages the reader to live for the journey instead of the destination. Part of it reads:
Have Ithaka always in your mind. Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don’t in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years, so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way
“I love that poem,” she says. “People my age need to hear things like that – that it’s the journey.”
As for her streak of days with a 5K, she doesn’t have an end goal. She doesn’t want to get to 2,000 or 5,000. She just wants to feel good, and she knows that when she gets out and moves, she feels great.
Her plan is to keep going.