On the day Christine Hobson, now 72, retired, she wasn't preparing for a relaxing weekend. "I retired on the Friday, and I did the London Marathon on the Sunday, to prove to myself I wasn't on the scrapheap," she told This Morning hosts Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley.
"That was to be my one and only marathon, but it wasn't my one and only," she laughs. During Christine's second marathon in Chester, she spotted someone wearing a '100 Marathon' t-shirt in support of a friend completing the challenge.
"I thought 'that's a stupid thing to do', and then I thought 'you know you were looking for some stress', so I decided on my second marathon that I was going to do 100. I ended up doing Antarctica, I got a world record," she says.
Soon after, Christine started posting her efforts, advice, and achievements on Instagram and later TikTok, with the help of her granddaughter. "My granddaughter taught me to do TikTok, and all of a sudden, one of [the videos] went viral, and I can't cope," she says.
As a former headteacher who "sat at a desk for nine million years", Christine wasn't someone who'd be running marathons since her 20s, prepared to take on the distance. She was looking for a challenge.
Since retirement, Christine has completed 125 marathons across all seven continents, completing races in Marrakech, Singapore, Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires, and Niagara Falls. She has run seven marathons in seven days twice, and at 69 years old in 2022, she became the oldest person to complete the Antarctic Ice Marathon.
Christine has also amassed over 32k followers on Instagram and over 16k on TikTok, where she shares the benefits of picking up exercise later in life, her tips for getting started, insights into the marathon training schedule, and more inspirational wisdom.
In one viral video, Christine says: "When people hear that I lift weights, people think it's something very dramatic, but it's not", showing herself lifting a kettlebell and doing regular chores around the house, such as putting plates away in the kitchen, lifting the washing basket, and standing up from the sofa.
"It's this, this, and this. The gym just helps me do it better," she says. "It's not training for the gym. I'm training so life stays easy."
In another, she says: "It's not getting older that will stop you moving, it's too much sitting and too little challenge. They call sitting the new smoking - makes you think, doesn't it? So I run, and I lift, and at 72, that doesn't just give me fitness, it gives me freedom. But walking and bodyweight exercises are a good way to start," she says.
Speaking to Ben and Cat on the This Morning sofa, Christine says that resistance training has given her "the freedom to do the things I want to do, the things that other people want to do".
From keeping daily life moving to going on holiday and "going on a train when you're not as stable as you used to be and getting down onto the platform", Christine is helping redefine longevity and ageing gracefully by promoting ways to make sure you can do what you want for longer.
