The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree for Tara Murdock.
You may not recognize her by her married name, but she comes from Lookout Mountain’s First Family of Running and she’s following in the very same footsteps as her grandfather, the late, great Joe McGinness.
Tara is the daughter of Joe McGinness Jr and his wife Tara. She’s a spunky little 45-year-old who graduated from GPS in 1987 before earning a degree in English from Ole Miss in 1991.
She would be the first to admit that she wasn’t a star athlete growing up, but she was introduced to the sport that made her grandfather famous and she’s sharing some of the same with younger girls in this city.
She has returned to work as a Sales Assistant at Raymond James after taking a few years to have children, but she’s also gotten involved in a national program called “Girls on the Run” and she’s as excited about that as she ever was for any other running she may have done.
“It’s geared to young girls in grades three, four and five and it’s a program used in innercity schools. I do my volunteering at St.
Peters and I had no idea what I was getting into when I started,” Tara explained while relaxing in her husband Bill’s office at Baylor where he serves as the Director of Financial Aid.
“We meet with these girls for an hour twice a week for 12 weeks. In addition to letting them know about the benefits of running, we also try to teach life lessons like how to be a good friend, how to make positive decisions and how to believe in themselves.
“The things I’m trying to teach are the very things that I need to remember myself, but I have to lead by example. We finish the program with a 5K run and the next one begins in February, but we’re hoping to get more Hamilton County schools involved,” Tara said with a smile on her face.
Tara and Bill are the proud parents of two children, a 13-year-old daughter named Riley, who is a seventh grader at Baylor, and Will, a lovable 10-year-old boy who is in the fourth grade at St. Peters.
While they are very much involved in their children’s lives, Tara still finds time to run 25-30 miles a week. She doesn’t have the same intensity and drive as her grandfather once possessed, but running has been and still is a huge part of her life.
“I ran track and cross country when I was younger, but was not a star at all. I was just an average middle of the road runner, but I’m still doing it. So many of my friends I used to run with have quit and are doing other things,” she said.
The running boom was in full force back in the early 80s when Tara was a little girl. But back in those days, the Saturday morning thing to do was attending local road races.
She wasn’t trained to go the full distance, but she always entered the one-mile fun runs and always won trophies in the process.
“My grandfather was 100 percent my influence for running. I started running and liked it. We’d go on family vacations and the question was always, “How far did you run today?”
There was one race in particular that changed Tara’s life and that was the Chattanooga Half-Marathon in 1997 that started at Finley Stadium and wound around Riverfront Parkway before heading out Amnicola Highway before turning around and coming back.
“My grandmother (Joe’s wife Billie) had died a couple of weeks before and my grandfather was standing down by Newton Chevrolet cheering for me around the 12-mile mark. It was such an emotional experience that I cried the rest of the way to the finish line, but that changed my life as that gave me confidence I didn’t have before,” she recalled.
Unlike her grandfather who ran 34 marathons including 17 Bostons, Tara has only run three marathons and isn’t driven to run any more.
“The 2005 Chickamauga Battlefield Marathon was my first and I got through the first half in about 90 minutes, but I had to walk most of the second half and finished with a 4:25, which wasn’t too bad,” she stated.
She later ran Chickamauga one more time while completing the Atlanta Marathon one time as well.
“I might run another one with my children, but I don’t have anything to prove along those lines. You have to have desire to run marathons and I just don’t care to go that long these days.
Tara used to run a lot of Chattanooga Track Club races and for whatever reason, she liked the ones will challenging hills. The Chattanooga Chase 8K and the Raccoon Mountain 10K are just two that come to mind.
“I enjoy running hills. I’ll never forget Jack Forde, who was my coach at GPS, who gave great advice about running hills. He said to not look down and to not look up, but to make friends with that hill and just dance up it. That’s what I tried to do,” she said with a laugh.
Tara used to be a regular member of the Saturday morning group at the downtown YMCA, which gathers every week for long runs of various distances.
“I just don’t want to get up that early on Saturday anymore,” she explained.
But for someone who was raised with a group of runners, it has become one of the most important parts of her life.
“I try to run almost every day and it’s my lifeline. It’s who I am and what I do, but nobody can do it for me. There are some days when it’s hard to get started, but I always feel better after about 10 minutes when my body has had a chance to get warm.
“I love hiking and I enjoy running with my children. Riley is really good and you’ll be writing about her one day. She doesn’t see her potential just yet and I certainly don’t put any pressure on her,” Murdock said.
When asked about something nobody else knew about her, she recalled an experience in 2003 that was a once-in-a-lifetime challenge.
“I got to audition for Jeopardy and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. They make you take a test and you have to answer about a question per second. You don’t have time to think, but I was in an out in no time as I didn’t pass the test,” stated Murdock.
Tara stays plenty busy with family activities these days, but she also still finds time to run. She’s thankful to have that ability and she’s certainly appreciative of the joy it brings, but she comes by it naturally and that’s reason enough to keep going.
(This is the 45th in a series of runners in Chattanooga. If you know someone who would make an interesting story, email John Hunt at nomarathonmoose@comcast.net)