Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

A marathon of a career

Story by James Hill. Photos by James Hill and courtesy of Levi Query.

Levi Query may be 62 years old but that didn’t stop her from finishing the 26-mile New York City Marathon in 3 hours and 49 minutes last fall. The time made her the No. 1 American woman in her age group and fourth overall.

Thanks to her speedy run, she qualified for the Boston Marathon this spring by 31 minutes. Not bad for somebody who hasn’t run a marathon since she did it in Athens, Greece, eight years ago.

“I had been there, done that with marathons and wanted to do other things,” she said.

But the Cascade Campus physical education instructor and assistant department head couldn’t stay away and now is preparing for her next marathon. She has been running them since she was 33. Then, her routine involved daily 1-mile runs to work off additional weight she had gained during pregnancy. Now her training jogs involve double-digit mileage numbers. Through the years, she reckons she has finished 50 marathons since she started 30 years ago. The lure of trying the New York event was too great to pass up when the opportunity arose.

“I never thought I’d do so well,” she said. “I just didn’t want to get hurt. I wanted to run the New York Marathon because my daughter lives there and we ran together. We both ended up qualifying for Boston.”

Query is quite an interesting person. One son is a member of the band The Decemberists and the other is a botanist for the city of Portland, and her daughter is studying to be a doctor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. Query has cycled the route of the Tour de France and her father was the minister at the Piedmont Presbyterian Church. Born in Chehalis, Wash., she grew up a few blocks from the Cascade Campus.

Query works out at PCC

Her passion for running and exercise is surpassed only by her passion for teaching at PCC. She instructs seven classes per term that include spinning, circuit training, boot camp, walking and jogging. She wanders the physical education building, stopping every so often to say “hello” to students or staff members. Her dedication to the student is always apparent.

“It’s the job meant for me,” said Query, who holds a bachelor’s degree in math from Willamette University and a master’s in exercise science from Portland State University. “It’s the kind of job I’ve spent my whole life training for. It fits like an old glove.”

She had spent time working at a local hospital and a dot-com writing health assessments where she managed a staff of writers from all over the country, when she ventured into education. She had been a faculty member at Mt. Hood Community College and was at Clark College when a job opportunity emerged at PCC Cascade. If the college hadn’t had a position open she was targeting a math job with Jefferson High School. She says that because she grew up in the neighborhood, her passion for helping the local students comes natural.

“I feel that it’s a privilege to know them,” Query said of her students. “They appreciate the little things they have in life even though it’s so hard. They work graveyard shifts, then go to class, and have kids. Teaching them has been the best thing for me. I want to make a difference. I want to be a friend and support for them, not just a fitness instructor.”

New York City Marathon veteran

This was the fourth time Query had run the marathon. In 2007, she was one of 38,000 runners who had to get to the start line five hours ahead of time because of the large turnout. The city closes the streets along the route two hours before the start, which had an estimated 2 million spectators lining the streets.

“There were lots of people from all over the world,” she said. “It was like a party. There were church choirs and bands. I cried most of the time because I enjoyed the atmosphere so much.”

With the Boston Marathon on the horizon, it’s time for more training. She said the training runs are far harder than the race itself. But to make them interesting Query said she picks routes to run all over the city, such as through downtown, to Lake Oswego or over many of Portland’s downtown bridges.

“I’d sit there and think of runs that might interest me,” she said. “I don’t like places that don’t have an interesting environment.”

The future of Query’s marathon running career, though, may come to an end.

“Boston will be it,” she said with a smile