October 30, 2026
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Provided Courtesy/Sandra Folzer
Chestnut Hill resident Sandra Folzer, 87, is aiming to break an American age-group record at the Cooper Norcross Run the Bridge 10K on Sunday, Nov. 1. The longtime runner has been racing for nearly 50 years.
When Sandra Folzer finished a record-breaking race in Philadelphia two years ago, she needed to make a phone call.
She had just run the Rothman Orthopaedics 8K in 50 minutes, 36 seconds — a performance she said broke a world record for her age group. But her daughter wasn’t there to share the moment.
“What was fun about it was that as I ran it, I knew that I broke the world record and I was running by myself … so I asked some young fellow if I could borrow his phone so I could call my daughter and tell her that I broke the record,” she said.
Now 87, the Chestnut Hill resident has another goal: an American record at Cooper Norcross Run the Bridge on Sunday, Nov. 1.
The sold-out 10K begins at 8:30 a.m., taking runners over the Ben Franklin Bridge between Camden and Philadelphia before continuing through Camden. The event benefits The Larc Norcross School in Bellmawr, which serves students and adults with severe and profound disabilities.
Folzer said she’s targeting the women’s 85–89 record for a road 10K, a time of 1:21:34 set by Ginette Bedard in 2018.
Folzer is familiar with the course and confident about her chances. She said she finished Run the Bridge in roughly 68 minutes last year and 67 minutes the year before — both well below the record she hopes to break.
Her running career began with the 1976 Philadelphia Marathon. In the decades since, she has taken on distances well beyond 26.2 miles, including Maryland’s JFK 50 Mile, which she said she finished in nine hours and one minute.
Today, her routine covers about 20 miles across three days each week, with company along the way.
Tuesdays bring interval training with a group in Doylestown, where her daughter lives.
Thursdays mean runs with a rabbi friend or friends on Forbidden Drive. On Saturdays, she runs with the Shawmont group in the Wissahickon, joining younger runners for awhile.
“Some of the people I run with, they’ve been running 35 years or more, so that’s kind of fun,” she said.
She also plays tennis once a week and does yoga and knee exercises to keep her joints limber.
Some running memories carry significance beyond the clock. In the mid-1990s, after being diagnosed with breast cancer, Folzer ran the Race for the Cure. She was bald from chemotherapy, surrounded by friends wearing T-shirts her daughter had made.
“It was quite emotional and really nice,” she said.
Racing also gives Folzer and her partner, John Dulik, a reason to explore. The two met while teaching at Community College of Philadelphia, where she taught mental health and social services classes and he taught music.
They have a farm in northeastern Pennsylvania, and Dulik accompanies her to races there and in nearby New York.
“There’s a race in some small town and we go there, so it’s sort of an adventure,” she said.
Their outings also include local theater productions and Philadelphia Orchestra concerts. But running remains a regular part of Folzer’s life, bringing together competition, friendships and new destinations.
For people who think they’re too old to begin, she encourages giving running a try if their health allows it.
As for her own racing future, she has no plans to stop.
“If I get to the point that I can’t run, I’ll walk,” she said. “If I get to the point that I can’t walk, I’ll crawl.”
