Meet the 90-year-old runner set to make history in Philly this weekend

• His motivation? "It's the challenge," he tells Axios.

The big picture: The Broad Street Run is the nation's largest 10-mile race, with around 27,500 runners expected to participate this year.

• The event, which began in 1980, was postponed to the fall last year due to the pandemic after going virtual in 2020.

How it started: Thal got interested in running at the age of 55. "I just felt like I was not being active enough," he recalls.

• Thal, who was an electrical engineer with General Electric for decades, began training and competing in local 5K and 10K races.
• He started running marathons at the age of 72, which he continued for a dozen years. He's competed in 18 total.

The intrigue: Thal credits his diet — which includes drinking lots of milk and avoiding salt and alcohol — for keeping him running as a nonagenarian. But whether that's his secret to success is open to debate.

• "What I eat, that's a matter of absolute fact. Whether or not it helps, that's, to some extent, speculation," he says.

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to show that around 27,500 runners are expected to participate in the Broad Street Run this year, not 35,000.