(Mar. 2020) In her prime, Mary Button qualified for two Olympic Marathon Trials and recorded
a personal best of
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Career-profession? My husband and I operated a running apparel company, RaceReady for 18 years.
I am retired now, but I am an environmental and political activist an environmental and political activist
who serves on the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the non-profit Friends of Griffith
Park (Los Angeles).
When and why did you start running? I running in high school in the fall of 1972 in southern New
Jersey when I was a freshman in high school. Our swim coach suggested we take up another sport in
order to become better swimmers. We had swim practice three times a week. It wasn’t called “cross training” back then, but the idea was