A Matter of Pace: Hansi de Petra Rigney ’59

In just the past 20 years, Hansi de Petra Rigney ’59, age 82, has run 120 marathons . . . and shows no sign of stopping. Running keeps her healthy, clears her mind, and allows her to visit new places and to meet new people. And, as she jokes, the longer she continues, “there’s less and less competition.”

Before Hansi ran, she walked—race walked. Her father was a world champion race walker who qualified for the Berlin Olympics in 1936 and himself competed well into his 80s. He was opposed to running, and he warned Hansi of the effects that running would have on her body. (Aside from a recent hamstring injury and a replacement hip, though, she’s holding up well.) So, starting after college, Hansi joined her father in race walking competitions all over the United States and Europe. “We did very well,” she says, quickly correcting herself: “He did very well. I did so-so.” When her father died, Hansi, at 60 years old, decided it was time to start running. Her first marathon was the Big Sur International Marathon. She has since run in all six major marathons— Boston, Berlin, Chicago, New York, London, and Tokyo—as well as Rome and the California International Marathon in Sacramento.

Hansi’s weekly training routine consists of one long run of 15 to 20 miles, three 10-mile runs, a day of rest, and walking with a group on the weekend. She also swims almost every day. “You really have to commit yourself to running, because it takes so much time and energy,” she says. But living on the Monterey Peninsula makes it easier. Hansi explains, “I train along the ocean and the waves are beautiful, the weather is pretty nice, and there are birds and seals and otters and deer and all kinds of wild animals. It is a pleasure.” She prefers to train solo, she says, because she likes to stop to take photos or to greet people she knows along the trail.

When it comes to the main attraction, however, Hansi can’t let herself get distracted. It’s all well and good to place first in a division of one—“There are not too many old people who still run,” she says—but to qualify for a major event like the Boston Marathon, runners have to finish within a specific time. For the 80-plus crowd, that’s five hours and 20 minutes. She’s come under that mark in almost every race in the past couple of years.

For Hansi, one of the great joys of running marathons is the chance to travel. She is no stranger to international life. Born to an Italian father and a German mother, she spent her early years in Berlin. When their apartment was bombed in 1945, the family relocated to her father’s hometown in Abruzzo, a region of southern Italy (where she is still known as “the German woman’s daughter”). They later settled in Carmel when her father got a teaching position at the Defense Language Institute. He enrolled her at Santa Catalina to “keep me away from those handsome boys” at her middle school, she says.

Hansi speaks fondly of her Catalina experience, especially of teachers such as Sister Kieran and Sister Gracia, who spoke Italian. “The teachers were not, as people like to recount, mean nuns who hit you on the hand. They were all beautiful, kind, very good teachers,” Hansi says. A good student, she enjoyed the “rigorous, intellectual atmosphere” of the school. She played field hockey, took tennis lessons, and, as she recalls, was surrounded by music. And she always felt supported, not only by the teachers but by her classmates. When her parents divorced, she was invited to stay with a Catalina family in Hollister for the summer. They gave her a job and let her use their car, “which I scraped one time,” she laughs somewhat guiltily.

Hansi went on to major in French and Spanish at Dominican College of San Rafael. She had planned to become a teacher after she graduated, but she became a flight attendant for Pan Am instead. On a flight from Los Angeles to Guatemala, she met the man who would become her husband of 54 years: Robert, a pilot. The couple settled in Berlin, where two of their four children were born and where their daughter, Katie Rigney Dietrich ’97, was educated before coming to Catalina. The family also lived for a time in Hong Kong, where one son was born, and traveled extensively across Europe, South Africa, and Japan.

Because of her connections to Berlin, Hansi has a soft spot for the Berlin marathon. She estimates she has run the race more than 20 times. In addition to visiting her sons there, she belongs to a Berlin-based running club called the Kilometer Eaters. After each marathon, “there’s always a certain amount of beer drinking, of course,” she says.

Hansi wants to try to keep to a pace of five marathons a year. She ran the Tokyo marathon in March and the Big Sur marathon in April; she plans to run the Berlin and Sacramento marathons in the fall. She was scheduled to run in Boston this year, but her husband passed away just two weeks prior. The loss has been devastating. But, as in running, she continues to put one foot in front of the other. If Hansi has her way, she will continue running until she’s 90. Don’t be surprised if she blows past that finish line.