Sue Chastain - Our Lady of the Bandana

Sue Chastain was born in 1950 in, as she describes, “tiny town” Danielsville, the zip code is a decimel, between Athens and Commerce, Georgia.  Sue graduated from Madison High School where she particiapted in girls basketball.  This was the only sport available to females and they had to play a half court game.  Years later Georgia High School coaches came to the stunning realization that females could indeed run the full length of a basketball court and live to tell about it!  After graduation Sue attended Middle Georgia College where she “learned a great deal about life but not much academically”.  Sue returned to her roots in Danielsville and attended the University of Georgia but did not “finish”.  Sue eventually relocated to the metropolis of Winterville where she resided for twenty-six years before returning again to Danielsville.  She began work as a substitute mail carrier in 2001 and was able to get a full time route in 2011.  

Sue has always been athletic and was active in slow pitch softball for twenty-five years, playing on several teams in the Athens area.  Her interest in running began in the early 1990s when she particiapted with friends in the Athens Run for Home.  After several races she learned that she had earned POINTS!  She had heard of the Run and See Georgia Grand Prix series but thought that that was only for elite runners.  Her equilibrium was stunned when she observed in the Georgia Runner Magazine (yes there was in the early years of our republic a paper version) at a 5k race in Sandy Creek Park that she not only had points but was leading the 45-49 female age group.  With this motivation Sue went out of her comfort zone in 2000 and drove her then “rickety old car” to a race in the Atlanta area.  She recalls how shocked Will Chamberlin was to see her coming to the finish line at a distant race.     

Delivering the mail put a temporary fourteen year gap in Sue’s running career as she had Saturday mail delivery responsibilities.  Sue’s Postal Service responsibilites since 2015 are part time allowing her to resume competative running with the ever present bandanna, completing eighty-nine races.  Her most memorable races are Tybee Island Half Marathon in 2000, and “Brasstown Bald ranks high (pun intended)”.  Her most grueling race was the Mountain Ranger eighteen mile run in Dahlonega.  Sue rates Hogpen Hill as the “the toughest” race.  Sue enjoys trail races and any race on the UGA campus.  Sue was a close second in the competative 60-64 age group in Run and See GeorgiaGrand Prix and first in the Black Bag Race Series in 2015.  When Sue slows down, her hobbies include reading, and collecting”old stuff” (not senior runners but pre-1900 bottles). 

Sue advises that It has been a great experience meeting and getting to know the family of runners who are new to her since she started to run again in 2015.  She acknowledges, “What a thrill it was so see so many familiar faces from fifteen years ago”.   Sue has developed two abnormal curvatrues of the spine (kyphoscolois) that causes he to tilt forward and to the side.  So if you don’t know who she is , just look “for the slow-moving woman with not too pretty posture wearing the bandanna trudging to the finish line”!  Sue considers races in terms of what she can contribute to  to charities, exercsie and “feel-good highs”.

Bob checking out from the back of the pack. Watch for the profile on George Robertson and on senior runner extraordinary Geri Barrios.