Running races as a woman over 60 involves a challenge to conventional wisdom as much as to legs and lungs. With the Boston Marathon less than a month away, PNS columnist Eve Pell recounts her own passage from worst runner in the third grade to a championship cup in the Marathon. Pell, who runs for the Impala Racing Team of San Francisco, is currently the top-ranked road runner in the women's 60-64 division. She writes a monthly column on veteran athletes for Pacific News Service. An earlier version of this article appeared in Runner's World magazine.

There I was, age 60 plus two weeks, in the ballroom of a grand hotel, taking part in the Boston Marathon awards ceremony.

I stood on the stage with some truly great runners -- record-setters, Olympic medal winners, three-time race champion Uta Pippig -- to be presented with a large crystal vase. I had won the women's over-60 division in a time of 3:25, a personal best. I was so elated at being in such company that I didn't mind being a footnote -- oldest woman and slowest competitor to take home a trophy.

Growing up, I was the worst runner in my class -- at least until 4th grade, when Ellen Wood came, and then I was second worst.

So when I was in my early 40s and my then-husband suggested we take up jogging for fitness, it never occurred to me that I could be fast. When he decided to enter a local 10K race, my children and I ran, too, just for fun -- and, to my great surprise, I beat quite a few people. I entered more races. I began to place third, or second, among the over-40 women. The tortoise was showing signs of becoming a hare.

Two years passed and my husband left -- but by then I had joined a running club and got serious about workouts. I enjoyed long runs on the mountain trails of Marin County, California, where I live, seeing spring wildflowers give way to golden hills, splashing through puddles during winter rains.

I came to love racing, especially passing younger men. My times improved, and I began to win my age group. When I was 52, I broke the tape in the Dipsea Race, a grueling run over treacherous mountain trails that is handicapped for age and sex so that all starters have an equal chance.

I've been at it ever since -- thousands of miles in hundreds of races, leading to the crystal vase at Boston.

I enjoy the success -- but I admit I have complicated feelings about being a competitive old woman. I grew up in the 1940s and 50s, when women existed to please men and raise children. Babe Didrikson Zaharias was girls' only athletic role model, and my ideal was Elizabeth Taylor of the lavender eyes and black lashes.

Today, outwardly, I embrace the "be all you can be" of present-day feminism. But the bad old attitudes hang around. Maybe I am weird to enjoy intense physical exertion, hair flying wildly, face scrunched with effort and dripping with sweat. Maybe a grandmother of two does not belong in this territory. Grampys so outnumber Grannies at the starting lines -- it's okay for them to be wrinkled, gray and fit, but I wonder what people think of the Grannies standing around in racing shorts and singlets.

It's true I look younger than I am -- people say, "You're sixty? I don't believe it." My vanity likes that. But that implies I would be less attractive if I did look my age, and I don't like that. I would like to believe that "attractive" is not completely synonymous with "young." No matter how fast I run, I can't outrun old age.

Some people clearly think it is unfeminine to be as competitive and fit as I am -- some feminists even believe competition itself is a bad thing. One old friend -- a member of my woman's consciousness-raising group in the 1970s -- surprised me by saying, "I don't see why you have to race. If you like to run, why not just go out and run?"

I've thought about this a lot. But, though people may find it politically incorrect, age-inappropriate, and masculine, I love both running and competing.

The candles from my 60th birthday cake were barely cold when I went head-to-head with a woman my age at the Carlsbad 5000, a national championship near San Diego. We were both brand new to the division and both aiming to win.

She went out very fast, but I gradually caught up. In the last hundred yards, we were virtually side by side, locked into a dash for the tape -- two old women charging for the finish with all the force their aging legs could muster. I won by two seconds, and I was jubilant.

Later, I could not help but see all this as ridiculous -- I'd traveled 400 miles, suffered dreadful pre-race anxiety, and strained like a madwoman to beat her -- at an age where one is supposed to be wise, serene, and unselfish.

But it was exciting. It was fun -- I love the sensation of moving fast and having a clear task -- to run her down, pass her up, leave her gasping.

After the race, we had a cordial chat, no longer rivals, but two women united by common goals. Which is not bad for grannies, or anyone else for that matter.