Janet Cain
Janet Cain is a former USA Track & Field National Marathon Champion in both the 55-59 and 60-64 age group. She set a Napa Valley Marathon record for the latter age group in 2014, finishing the race in 3:43:39. Her life has been a series of exciting wins and heartbreaking losses. Now 72 and living in Sonoma, CA, where she has a clinical psychology practice, Cain is still running strong and posting faster times now that she is working with a coach for the first time in her running career. The biggest change has been adapting to running in the visually impaired division.
Growing up in New Jersey in the pre-Title IX era, Cain’s only outlet for sports was cheerleader or flag twirler. Her father, a former collegiate cross-country runner, encouraged her to run. One day she put on her Keds, went for a run, and fell in love with the sport. Little did she realize then how important running would become as her life spiraled out of control and running became her stress reliever.
In 1975, married to her high school sweetheart, Cain was in a demanding Ph.D psychology program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, while her husband was in an architectural program at the same school. Four months into their marriage he was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin Lymphoma. “My life went out of control,” says Cain. “I needed something simple and inexpensive to gain a sense of control and that was my running.”
She entered her first race on a lark, a Bonnie Bell 10K, and placed third overall with no training. As her husband’s disease progressed and he was hospitalized for long stretches she began to run more. “I call 1980 the year our dreams were dashed,” she says. “My husband’s illness was getting worse and we knew there was no cure. Running became my only sense of control and for a few hours, I felt at peace.”
In 1980 she ran the Revco (now Cleveland) Marathon with no training in 3:10. In the mid-’80s she was running 100 miles per week. They moved from Cleveland to Sonoma, California for her husband’s work and she set up an office for her clinical psychology career and started seeing patients.
When her husband was well enough to travel, they went to Rome for their 10-year wedding anniversary. Their time in Rome just happened to coincide with the 1985 Rome Marathon, which she entered, again on a lark, and won in 2:58:11.
She started to take her running more seriously, sometimes running five marathons a year. In 1987 her husband was back in the hospital waiting for a bone marrow transplant at Sloane Kettering in New York. A trip to Spring Lake, New Jersey, to visit George Sheehan, a friend of her husband’s who was also going through cancer, turned life-threatening for Cain.
She went swimming in the Atlantic Ocean not realizing she had a small cut on her heel. Unknown to Cain, the ocean water was polluted and the cut got infected. She underwent thirteen surgeries to save her foot. During this time, her husband passed away. She was in a wheelchair for one year post-surgery and did not run for five years. “I didn’t think that I would ever run long or fast again,” recalls Cain.
There were other setbacks and injuries. Dog bites, falls, a torn hip labrium that was healed with platelet-rich plasma. In 1996 she was assaulted by a patient and suffered a broken shoulder but still managed to run the 100th Boston Marathon, qualifying at the California International Marathon in 3:30.
But the worst was yet to come and it wasn’t related to running. In 2017 her eye doctor’s office phoned in the wrong eye drop prescription to the pharmacy. She used it for six weeks before another eye doctor checked her eye pressure, which was at a seriously dangerous level.
She underwent emergency surgery the next day but the high eye pressure destroyed most of her optic nerve in her left eye. She is now legally blind in her left eye and runs with a guide in the visually impaired division. “I see shadows so it’s not complete darkness, she explains.” For the 2020 Boston virtual marathon she ran without being tethered to a guide, surrounded by close friends on familiar back roads around her neighborhood where she felt safe and secure.
In 2009 she hired her longtime friend, Dick Beardsley, as her coach. Cain met him while attending his training camps in Minnesota and they became instant friends. He sends her a weekly schedule and they talk on the phone to discuss how it’s going. “I really like his approach,” says Cain. “It’s very old school.” He has her running about 50-60 miles per week with a lot of track workouts that she enjoys as she can see the lane lines and stay focused. The one area she finds challenging now that she is older, is more recovery time.
Despite her setbacks and heartbreaks, Cain is optimistic and positive. She looks back on her racing with fond memories. Number one is running into the Rome Coliseum for the final lap of her win in 1985. Her first Boston (1984) ranks second, with her parents and her dad's friend cheering and drinking Irish coffee on a cold, rainy day. Third is her husband (she remarried in 1993) being her visual guide (even though he does not run often) at the Santa Rosa Marathon. Fourth is seeing the U.S. flag while on the podium for 3rd place at the World Masters Marathon championship in 2011.
Cain likes to keep things simple. “Everything today seems so much more complicated than when I started running in 1975. Eat this, don’t eat this. Do this, don’t do this. My advice for any runner at any age is to just ignore the noise and enjoy the simple but profound act of putting one foot in front of the other.”
Note about the author: Gail Waesche Kislevitz is an award-winning journalist and the author of six books on running and sports. She was a columnist for Runner’s World for fifteen years and her freelance work has appeared in Shape, Marathon and Beyond, and New York Runner.
