Moments before 64-year-old Holly Reese set out to reclaim the women’s world record for most pushups in an hour on Sunday afternoon, chatter and upbeat pop music enveloped West Berkeley’s Finnish Hall. Old friends smiled, laughed and hugged. As she stepped on stage, the crowd cheered wildly then went silent as she approached the mat.
A health aging coach and athlete who lived in Berkeley in the 1980s and ‘90s, Reese has overcome a hip replacement and a rare autoimmune disorder that attacked her connective tissue and made moving painful.
On Aug. 19, 2023, at age 61, Reese became the first woman awarded a Guinness World Record for pushups in an hour. Guinness told her she’d need at least 1,000 “military-style” pushups — arms reaching a 90-degree bend — to enter their books. She ended up doing 1,036 at DJ’s Martial Arts and Fitness in Oakland. About a month later, she set a new mark of 1,207 at Unity of Walnut Creek…