‘She’s tough and is just a natural’: Bloomsday’s 92-year-old record holder June Machala stays positive through health issues

Running for June Machala took on an entirely different meaning in her childhood, compared to the running she took up recreationally at the age of 55. Since then, she’s defied her age and has been smashing age group records ever since.

Now 92, Machala grew up in Japan during World War II and remembers running from bombs in her home country, said her husband, Joe Machala.

“She had a tough childhood, and that made her tough. She remembers B-29s bombing them, and they’d run to the shelters.”

June spent her youth working in an airplane factory and farming and didn’t have the opportunities to compete in athletics like kids do now.

“She is an athlete,” Joe said. “If she would have had opportunities when she was young, she would have been a world-class athlete – there’s no doubt in my mind.”

June came to the United States in 1955, and 15 years later she was working at a Spokane restaurant across the street from the Riverside police station. She met Joe, a police officer who frequented the restaurant, and they were married in 1973.

In 1986 when June was 55, Joe entered her in a 3-mile race in Medical Lake. In the first race of her life, she was the second women’s finisher. She caught the bug from that and has been running competitively ever since.

As a 91-year-old in 2022, she ran Bloomsday in 1 hour, 36 minutes, 6 seconds to break the previous 90-plus age group record of 1:48:55. Joe ran it in 1:22:54 as an 80-year-old.

She was one of only two 90-plus females to complete Bloomsday last year, with the other being 93-year-old June Everly of Spokane. Additionally, there were three 90-plus men’s competitors who finished (ages 90, 91 and 91).

June holds six age-group records for women, including a 55:39 time in 1996 when she was in the 65-69 age group. In 2001 she had a time of 58:10 in the 70-74 age group, and since then has record times of 1:01:02 in 2006 (75-79), 1:12:06 in 2011 (80-84) and 1:28:23 in 2016 (85-89).

But Bloomsday isn’t possible this year for the couple, which moved from Spokane to Kettle Falls when they retired. June continues an 11-month battle with shingles, and the disease included a serious eye infection that nearly cost her the eye. She still is on a prescription drug that Joe said makes her unstable.

“It’s going to be hard not to be there, but I don’t want her to fall and hurt herself,” he said. “But she keeps talking about how she wants to do Bloomsday when she’s 95.”

“When the shingles go, I’ll have a brand new body again,” June added. “I suffer right now, and I still can’t see well. But I’m okay, and my mind is strong.”

Despite her health issues, the couple still jogs and runs six or seven days a week, many times along trails by their home near the Kettle Falls marina that connects to Lake Roosevelt. They go to a gym in Colville three times a week to lift weights, and Joe fishes when he can.

Shingles certainly isn’t going to get in the way of their routine.

“Other than that, she’s still active. She’s tough and is just a natural athlete,” Joe said.

“When I hit 90, I had a lot of physical problems. Doctor, doctor, doctor. I don’t want to go to doctors, because most of the time I can fix myself.”

Joe laughs that June’s walking pace at 92 is as fast as his pace when he jogs. He started running in his 30s, and their common love makes it easy to do a daily workout or two.

“We help each other out,” he said. “I got her into running, but once she got going she kept me going too. It’s turned into a lifestyle. If we don’t do it, we’d feel like we would be cheating ourselves. We sleep better and we feel better – we know it’s good for us. It’s just part of our day, really.”

“This is a habit,” June said. “For seven days a week, no matter what, we get up early in the morning, have a cup of coffee and then go work out.”

“We meet a lot of people we enjoy,” added Joe, who ran along with June for many of their early years of running with the unofficial Spokane Nooners club who gathered at Spokane Community College. “We socialize with the people we work out with.”

“She’s an inspiration to everybody. They look up to her because she’s so positive all the time. She has some natural ability, but she went through a lot.”

In 2014, June was inducted into the USA Track & Field Masters Hall of Fame in the long distance running old-timers category. At the time she was inducted, Machala had been running just 15 years and had set 11 American age-group records from 5K to the half marathon. Three times – 1996, 1997, 1998 – she was named the Masters LDR Age-Division Runner of the Year in the women’s 65-69 age group.

“She doesn’t get the recognition she deserves,” Joe said of her running career, some of it professionally. “She should be considered one of the top athletes from Spokane.”

She was 74 during Bloomsday in 2006 and finished in 63:18. She was one of six female runners who ran faster than their ages. Joe said he remembers running faster than his age when he clocked a 40-minute time at age 45.

Now, age is just a number they don’t pay much attention to.

“We don’t talk about age – we just do what we can do,” Joe said. “I have a lot of limitations, but I don’t think about them.”

“I’m only going to stop when I have to,” he continues. “Mentally I’ll keep going until my body shuts down. I’ve had people tell me that I’m going to run so much that I’m going to kill myself. But they are all gone and we’re still here.”

Later this year on Nov. 19, they will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in Spokane. Their family now spans multiple generations, and the total is “40-something” Joe said of their kids, grandkids and great-grandchildren.

“He takes care of me every day,” June said of her husband. “I feel good. I forget a lot, but a lot of people my age are in nursing homes.”