When your name means immortality, it obviously raises expectations. However, if anyone could live up to it, it just might be Athanasia “Soula” Thomas.
The 88-year-old Rossmoor resident is about as active as anyone half her age and even younger. Since retiring from her job at Cal State Long Beach in 1990, she has been engaged in competitive race walking and has competed in the International Championships every two years for the past 12 years. But her race walking events are only the competitive part of her life, which keeps her moving practically seven days a week.
She has taken fitness classes, taught by her daughter Zoe Hagmann, for the past 33 years. She currently takes a step class three times a week and walks three to four miles a day on the other two days.
On Saturdays, she drives to Irvine High School to work out on the track with a group of race walkers. And the rest of the time she simply finds ways to keep her feet moving. It’s not about training for races, it is simply her chosen lifestyle and it seems to be serving the nearly 89 year old very well.
“Keep active, you have to,” Thomas said. “You have to keep moving.”
Thomas and her husband Bill were married on May 11, 1951 and have lived in Rossmoor since 1960. Bill is a World War II veteran and is the columnist who contributes to the News Enterprise and Sun News with his column Veteran’s Voices. The couple raised three children in Rossmoor, son Tim Thomas and daughters Mary Vallens and Hagmann.
It was Hagmann, the youngest, who began teaching aerobics classes and encouraged her mother to take a class 33 years ago.
“She said, ‘Come on mom, you’re going to enjoy it,’” Thomas said of Hagmann’s encouragement.
But shortly into the first class, Thomas left and later told Hagmann, that is for you young people, Hagmann said. Hagmann told her that she has a heart and lungs like everybody else and she needed to exercise.
It took about a month for Hagmann to get Thomas back into a class and that time, Thomas found it more to her liking. Hagmann estimates that it was less than six months before Thomas became hooked. As classes have progressed and changed, Thomas has followed Hagmann into the different cardio classes, and she rarely misses a class.
“She just would not miss (class), unless she had to,” Hagmann said.
Thomas lived in occupied Greece during World War II and spent much of that time with other residents in the basement of their apartment building, hoping to avoid bombings from German and allied forces fighting over the territory. She said they spent much of the time under stress and pressure and often they spent nights using kerosene lanterns to keep light to a minimum. After the war, she came to the states and eventually met and married Bill after the two met while both on trips to New York City.
While she worked at Cal State Long Beach, Thomas would spend half of her lunch hour walking on the track at the school. A friend she worked with, encouraged her to join her race walking group. Thomas went to her first event and thought it wasn’t anything that she’d be interested in doing. But they asked her if she wouldn’t mind volunteering with track help and after seeing the racers in action, she was again hooked, she said.
Bill estimates that she has earned more than 60 medals over the years, including a gold medal at the International Championships two years ago when they were held in Sacramento.
Prior to that, she had traveled to England, Australia, Spain and Finland to compete. She has competed in many local events and her group is in charge of organizing an event that is held in Huntington Beach Central Park every March. At her peak, she could finish a 5K race walk in about 38 or 39 minutes. Since then she has only slowed to about 42 minutes, despite getting ready to turn 89 years old on Sept. 8.
Hagmann said that she hasn’t seen her mom slow down much over the years. Hagmann has had knee injuries that have caused her to modify classes at times, but never felt it was too noticeable. Until one day, when Thomas told her daughter, “class was a little slow today,” Hagmann recalled. Thomas has become an inspiration to others in the classes, and all the regulars know who she is. Even Hagmann, whose knees and bones have taken a pounding during 33 years of teaching classes sometimes wonders when it will all catch up to her. But then she looks at her mom and remembers whom she comes from.
“I think, OK, I can do that too, I’m going be her too,” Hagmann said.
When not training on a track or moving in a step class, Thomas looks for ways to keep moving. If she only has to get one or two items at the store, she will walk the half-mile from her home to the supermarket. When Bill spends time at the community center, she will drive him to the center, then leave the car and walk home to wait for him to be finished. Then she will walk back to get him and drive them both home. If she has time to get an errand done, such as the post office, she takes the walk.
She tries to eat well, but admits a weakness for chocolate ice cream. But for Thomas, it is not as much about keeping in shape or training, it is simply how she sees her life.
“It was sort of my nature to walk,” Thomas said. “I hope I can continue.”
