by Anne Button

An occasional runner in college, Mary recalls going jogging on the farm roads around Shippensburg. “Once I told my roommate I was going for a two-mile jog and I’d be back in a half hour. An hour later, I wasn’t back and my roommate was getting worried. Turns out I’d encountered a scary loose dog on one of those farms, and ended up taking the long way—the really long way—around it.”

Cowering under her desk in a Los Angeles high-rise building during a major earthquake in 1988, Mary Button ’81 thought, “I really need to make some changes in my life.”

Boy, did she.

That year, she quit her corporate job to start her own consultancy, joined a local running group, ran (and won) her first 10k and with it a complimentary entry to the 1989 Los Angeles Marathon. It was the start of a trajectory in which she has done what many dream of: made a living doing what she loves most.

Twenty years later, running is the keystone of Mary’s life. She has run 26 marathons (20 below three hours), qualifying for two Olympic trials and, with her husband Gerry Hans, operates RaceReady Sportswear, a running clothes company in Los Angeles.

A typical day finds Mary talking with RaceReady customers, posting online advice to runners, jogging with her husband after work, then getting together with running friends for dinner. Today, it’s hard to imagine her doing anything else, but her start in long-distance running was almost accidental.

“The only reason I ran the first marathon was I had won the free entry,” she says. “I put the entry away, thinking, ‘What a crazy thing to do. Why would I want to run a marathon?’” The answer—because she’s really good at it—came a few months later when on a whim and with very little training, ran it in just over three hours.

Accounting for every mile

Running has been the perfect accompaniment to Mary’s accountant (some say Type-A, or even obsessive) personality. She has faithfully tallied every mile she’s run since 1988, about 50,000 in total. Her top year was 1995, during which she ran more than 3,100 miles. That was the year before she clocked her fastest marathon in 2 hours and 42 minutes.

“But,” the accountant speaks, “each entry is only accurate to about a half mile.”

It’s that number sense that also drove her to complete 26 marathons (26 miles each). “I couldn’t just stop at 25!” she laughs.

Mary had been working as an accountant for twelve years, first for several large firms and then as a consultant, when she made her move. She started RaceReady Sportswear with her husband in 1993. Mary was Race­Ready’s CFO, but continued working as an accountant, “to pay the bills and have health insurance,” she says.

Mary and Gerry operated the business out of their Los Angeles home for the first few years, their living room a literal warehouse of running apparel. “I’d take an order in the kitchen, then go to the living room to process it,” Mary recalls. “I remember our filing system: the love seat had women’s large, the couch had men’s large and medium.”

Sales grew consistently and by 1996 there was enough business for Mary to join the company full time and to justify renting a warehouse and office space. “It was so great to have our house back. The first thing I did after we moved all of the inventory out was stretch out on the couch.” When Mary, 5’10”, says stretch, she means it.

Running with—and ahead of—the boys

Mary came to running by way of swimming, her first sport. “My coach told us to run whenever we couldn’t swim.” There was no girls’ track team at her New Jersey high school, so Mary joined the boys’ team. “It was 1973, the year after Title IX became law, and there wasn’t a lot of support for girls’ sports,” she recalls.

“Ten or fifteen girls tried to run with the boys. The coach told all but four of us to go away and lose some weight! That would never happen today—at least, I hope not.”

When she started running competitively in her early 30s, Mary was struck by different inequities. There was the prize money, on the order of ten times more for men than women. The running shoe options: “There were dozens for men, in varying widths and styles, and only a few choices for women.” In spite of these hurdles, the simple fact she was faster on the track than anyone – man or woman – around her, contributed to her growing sense of her strengths.

“I just began to realize that I could compete, in an absolute sense, anywhere: On the track, of course, but also off.” And compete she did, qualifying for her second Olympic Trials at the age of 40.

Mary literally reached new horizons through running: Winning a trip to Japan in a marathon, she stayed with a host family and “got a real sense of the culture. I realized there was a whole world out there for me to see.” She’s been a world traveler ever since.

“Taking it easy”

Now 48, Mary says she’s “taking it easy” —her most competitive days behind her. Her weekly mileage is down to “just” 40 miles and she no longer competes in marathons.

RaceReady, like a good running career, has yet to peak; sales have increased every year since 1993. Sales to individual customers have always been RaceReady’s bedrock; Gerry thinks it has to do with Mary’s personal touch. “She writes a personal note to every person who orders something, and people really respond to being treated like people rather than customer ID numbers.” The website has an “Ask Mary” section where runners e-mail questions about everything from training regimens to what to eat before a race.

“A lot of runners are pretty obsessive,” Mary says. “I have friends who do 100-mile races. I could never do that.”

“But,” she adds without a hint of irony, “I might do a 50.”

Anne Button lives in Denver, Colorado. Remembering that she and her sister Mary share the same genes helps when she is having a particularly slow run.