A Half-Marathon in All 50 States: Looking Back and Forward

 

A decade ago I had just finished my 87^th lifetime half-marathon. At the time I had only run a half-marathon in 25 states. Doing one in all 50 states had likely crossed my mind but it wasn’t a big goal of mine. Having run 52 marathons in 52 weekends and making a name and living off of that, half-marathons were races I enjoyed but rarely ran. In fact, on the day I ran my lifetime 100^th marathon in 2009, I had only raced 13 half-marathons.

But that day in Miami in 2016, I had just finished running a 1:28:56, my 41^st fastest half-marathon.  Almost exactly in the middle of the pack. (Less than a month after I had fallen and received a spiral fracture in my hand. The pictures of the race show me still wearing the brace.) I saw that my lifetime average of half-marathons that day was 1:30:14. I remember talking to another running friend and numbers nerd who told me something like it would take a good ten half-marathons around 1:27 or so to get that average under 1:30. That shouldn’t be a problem, I thought.

The next week I ran a 1:29:57 on an indoor track around anice rink. Not bad, but not what I was hoping. Then I proceeded to run 1:32:00, 1:31:47, 1:34:55, 1:36:21, 1:32:59 in my next five half-marathons. I was now at 1:30:25 lifetime average; 9 seconds slower in the wrong direction. Granted there were some extenuating circumstances for some of the slower times (two of them were on back-to-back days in July) but I thought this might be a touch harder than I originally surmised.

In Utah, 1:22:32 was my next race, just days after I moved halfway across the country. One race knocked an entire five seconds off of my average. It is still my 4^th fastest half-marathon to this day. Then Trump won the election. What does that have to do with anything? Well, I was avery early and vocal disapprover of the child rapist. This cost me virtuallyevery sponsorship I had, oodles of speaking engagements, and essentially mylivelihood. Racing took a back seat. When I did race, it was often a bit unprepared and not always in the best of mindsets.

I only ran five halfs in 2017 (including my 100^th lifetime half-marathon) and three in 2018 which also included one on a hot sandy beach in Galveston in, what was at the time, the slowest stand-alone half-marathon I had ever run - 1:48:48. I still finished 6^th overall.

In 2019, I had just come off a ridiculously good training schedule just to crap the bed in my only half-marathon of the year, running a 1:32:15when I was in PR shape.  My average, now at 104 half-marathons had crept up to 1:30:48.

In 2020, my only race in the COVID year I did one half-marathon where I took 2^nd in a time of 1:32:17 on a hilly course that was mostly in the dark. I also ran it in a mask to show all those "we can't breathe" people who freaking stupid they were. 

I did one half in 2021, and then in 2022 Itook on 6 half marathons in 6 days in 6 states with the goal to win them all. I took first in the first two, and then 2^nd in the last four races.  However, each course was usually a bit long and as I was doing six in six days so my times were quite pedestrian.  My average had climbed to 1:31:13 by the end of that week. Six years after I thought it would be a cake walk to get my time below 90 minutes, I had added a minute to my average time.

I ran a few more halfs, including a couple of 1:27s in 2023 and then disaster hit. I tore my root meniscus in my knee on Halloween night.  I didn’t know I had  at first, and while I tried to make it better, ran another 470 miles over the next four months. Finally finding out I needed surgery, I got it repaired and began the long 10 months of rehab.  From February until finally going for a three-mile run in November, I did everything right and by the book. But I knew something was up. My knee didn’t feel right. After pushing hard for another MRI, the results confirmed what I felt. The meniscus was toast. The only solution to get back to running was a partial knee replacement.

I got that surgery in February of 2025 and after hearing that I could likely be running again just four short months later, took a look at my running prospects and the calendar. I had 13 states I had not run a half-marathon in. If I began running again in July, I would have 10 months before I turned 50 to run a half-marathon in every state.  Given how I had not run in 16 months, that was a tough but not impossible challenge.  The only problem, or one of the biggest problems, is that I still hadn’t run a marathon in North Carolina. 

I had run my 49^th state in 2016 also with that broken hand.
I was going to run my 50^th in North Carolina.  On my 40^th birthday I celebrated by running 40 kilometers around a track. Quite knackered, I slept in the next day and missed the lottery for the race I wanted to enter.  Then everything I mentioned above happened. And here, ten years later, I still hadn’t run a marathon in North Carolina.

However, that happened, as I recap here.  And by then I had run a half in five more states. Throw in an international half-marathon and a half-marathon carrying a canoe in Ely, Minnesota, and I still had eight states to knock out before 05.31.26. 

I started the year off great with a new knee PR of 1:38:55in Mobile, Alabama. I figured if I played my cards right, I would possibly be running close to 1:30 in my final state, New York, on Mother’s Day weekend. This would be especially touching to me, having lost my mother just a few years ago and her being so supportive of my running for the past 25 years.

Then, late at night, I realized a crucial error. I had not run a half-marathon in Wyoming.  How had I missed that? And with my tight schedule, and Wyoming not having a lot of races in in the spring, I would be lucky to even find one. Of course, when I did, it would be the highest half-marathon I had ever run.

Unfortunately, at the beginning of February, I began to experience excruciating pains in my legs from muscle imbalances (I would late learn.)  My times were getting slower. Some of my training runs were approaching ten minutes per mile, which is two minutes per mile SLOWER than my 50 MILE personal best average.

I tried everything I could. Taking days off. Getting massages. Red light therapy. Steam rooms. Nothing was working. The big unknown was when I had three halfs in six days in three states. I can only say that I survived those, running 1:55:38, 1:50:44, and 1:54:04.  Then a week later, in Maui, the heat and humidity just destroyed me in the end, with me barely jogging the last four miles. I ran an atrocious 2:11:26. Ugh.

I bounced back slightly in another humid day in New York, what was supposed to be my final race, in 1:50:36. With one half marathon to go, my average had now climbed to 1:33:48. I had added nearly four minutes to my average from half-marathon 87 to 137.  50 races, with me adding 4.2 seconds with every race.

I stared down the downhill at the start of the Medicine Bow Half-marathon at 8700 feet. We would go down 600 feet in less than 5 miles, go back up 400 feet in the next two, and then turn around to reverse the course. Ugh Part Deux.

I finished in 2:17:34. The only slower half-marathon was the one I did, 100 days after I ran my first mile again, while PORTAGING A CANOE.

1:34:17 is my half-marathon average now. If I was a betting man I would say that it is highly unlikely I will get that time below 1:30 now.  If I ran my PR for the next 50 half-marathons, my average will still only be 1:30:29. Ok, take out the canoe half-marathon and the 70.3 Ironman half I did one month before I tore my knee (when I clearly was on a shredded knee it) and my average would be…drum roll…1:29:59. (I swear to god I did not do that on purpose.)

OK, there were a lot of numbers here to digest. If you are not a runner, your eyes probably glazed over. Hell, even if you are a runner they probably still did. A runner’s personal stats are like someone else’s dreams.  Who cares? But numbers are why I like running so much.  Other than a few caveats (bad weather, very tough course, etc.) you can look at a time for a race and make very reasonable comparisons to other races of the same distance.

After my first knee surgery, a few months later I was in Paris to watch the Olympics. I was walking every day but my knee was killing me. I told myself that if this meant my running days were over, so be it. I am a better swimmer anyway. I could make a late stage turn to masters swimming and enjoy that. Then I found out another surgery might make things better and it did. But I made a promise to myself that if I can’t be running semi-close to what I was running, even at my prime, I might go enjoy some runs, but my racing days were over. I simply don’t enjoy going slow.

Just a few days after my final state half-marathon, I appear to have found out how to fix the muscle imbalance in my legs with some physical therapy. On my birthday and the next two day I ran 5 miles outside for the first time since December.  Each run was pretty solid with me running right around 8 minutes per mile on the last two. I have signed up for some half-marathons in about three months.  I am giving myself that amount of time to lose the weight I have gained, fix my legs, and get back down to around 1:35 for a half and maybe an outside chance at sub-90 again.

I could likely write a book just about these half-marathons I have run. But the lessons I have learned boil down to one sentence: I was fortunate to do what I did. My father was crippled in a hunting accident when he was 33. My mother had a damaged heart from rheumatic fever from age 8 onward. The fact I am half a century old and miffed I can’t run a 6:52 average for 13.1 miles is a luxury. I don’t take it for granted. I also don’t use my age or the fact I can do more than whatever percentage of the world as an excuse to not keep trying to be the best version of myself that I can be.

So, I will keep on striving. I will keep pushing myself. I am sure I will fail. But I won’t ever stop doing what is best for me. I can only hope this inspires others to do the same.