Thoughts on Running a Race in all 50 States

Now that I’m up to 41 states in my quest to run a half marathon in all 50 states, I can stand back and take a look at my experience so far. When I started running half marathons, I didn’t have this goal. In fact, I didn’t have the goal of one in each state until I had already ran a half marathon in several states. One day I just said, hey that would be a fun goal to run a half marathon in every state, and I just sort of fell into it from there.

Running a race in all 50 states takes a ton of time, energy, and money. Unless you’re independently wealthy, it will most likely take you many years to accomplish your goal. Of course, the longer the distance you plan on running, the more expensive it will be, but not hugely more. Yes, marathons cost more than 5k’s to register, but the real expense is in the airfare, lodging, gas, and food. These expenses will be the same regardless of the distance you are running.

If you don’t have support from your family and boss (assuming you work and have a family) you won’t be able to accomplish this goal. I’ll re-phrase that. If you don’t have support from your family and boss you won’t be able to accomplish this goal in a timely manner. If you only get one week of vacation time off work a year, it will be much harder to travel to races. Initially it may work and you can travel during holidays that you have paid time off, but eventually it will get harder and harder to find races when you have time off work, especially if you don’t enjoy running in northern states around Thanksgiving or Christmas, for example.

The youngest member of my support crew (photo was taken several years ago)!

This goal also takes total commitment from family members because of the time and money involved. If your spouse isn’t on-board with this goal, instead of support you’ll get resentment and eventually your goal will deteriorate. My husband and daughter are my biggest running fans and they’ve seen first-hand how they’ve also benefited from my goal, by getting to travel to new states and have a fun family vacation. We’ve been to places that we probably never would have gone to, but have almost always been pleasantly surprised by the place. There have been a couple of places we were underwhelmed by, but we still managed to have a good time and make the most of it!

If I hadn’t ran the Madison Mini-Marathon, we probably wouldn’t have known first-hand what a fun city Madison is!

Having a goal to run a race in all 50 states also takes a huge amount of planning, especially when you get down to the final 15 or so states. Some states only have less than ten half marathons, which greatly limits when you can run them. Also, if you’re limited to a certain part of a state where you can run for whatever reason, that also limits when you can run those races. Your choices are also dictated by the distance you’re running. If you’re running 5k’s you will most likely have more options than if you’re running 10k’s simply because there are more 5k’s than 10k’s.

I’ve also found that many times the race I thought I would run (sometimes I’ll have a race in mind years in advance) just didn’t happen for various reasons and I ended up running an entirely different race. For example, I thought I would run the Tybee Island Half Marathon in Georgia and looked forward to it for years. The year I went to register for it there was some problem and the race director was thinking about canceling the race for that year. I could have waited to see what would happen but I didn’t want to take a chance and not be able to run it and have to scramble around to find another race at the last minute along with airfare, hotel, car rental, etc. so I signed up for Run the Reagan Half Marathon, a race near Atlanta. It was one of the worst half marathons I’ve ever ran and I regretted not just waiting until the next year for Tybee Island.

Run the Reagan Half Marathon was no fun but at least we had fun at the Botanical Garden in Atlanta after the race!

Sometimes even with the best intentions of planning, things (aka races) fall through. In the case of my race in Oregon, I thought I’d be running a small race in Eugene. I had already booked our airfare, hotels, and car rental but I just hadn’t paid my registration fee for the race yet. Since it was a small race with no incentive to sign up early (prices didn’t increase over time as they sometimes do), I just wasn’t in a hurry to sign up. My daughter was interested in running the 5k so I emailed the race director with a question about that, only to be told the entire event (half marathon and 5k) had been cancelled. Fortunately there was another half marathon that she told me about also in Eugene the day after the one I thought I would be running, so I signed up for that one on the spot and breathed a sigh of relief!

Beyond races being cancelled, flights are also often changed, delayed, or cancelled. I’ve had so many flight changes for races I was flying to, I learned early on to give myself a buffer of at least one day, if not two or more, depending on where I’m flying and what the flight times are. For example, for flights to big cities where there are multiple flights a day, a buffer of one day would be fine, but for flights to smaller cities and/or places where you have to connect through other cities, I would personally give at least two buffer days before the race, just in case something happens.

Although I feel like it’s probably too late at this point, I’ve wondered if maybe I should have joined the Fifty States Half Marathon Club. I’m just not sure I can justify the one-time $79 fee on top of either a 3 or 5 year membership fee. Since I’ve already ran 41 states, I’d have to pay for a 5 year dues membership. This might be well and good if I had another 25+ states to go but since I’ll hopefully be done in another few years, I just don’t think I would get enough out of it to justify joining now.

When I mention to people that I’m running a half marathon in all 50 states, the one question I get asked by far the most is, “Have you ran a race in Hawaii yet?” I guess a lot of Americans are fascinated by Hawaii. No one has ever asked me, “Have you ran a race in Rhode Island yet?” even though that one was one of my favorites so far. Oh, and the answer is, “Yes, Hawaii was one of the first half marathons I ever ran, before I even had the goal of running one in every state.” You can read about that here if you’d like.

Finally, I’ve learned that if you run enough races, eventually you’ll win an age-group award. I’ve always considered myself a near-the-front middle of the pack racer (if that makes sense), usually finishing in the top quarter for my age group. I never thought I’d “win” a race as my mother used to always ask me when I spoke to her afterwards (she’d ask, “Did you win?”) but I’ve been pleasantly surprised to win first, second, and third in my age group at races in Missouri,  New Hampshire, and Oregon, respectively.

What questions do you all have about running a half marathon or even a different distance race in all 50 states? Are any of you running a race in all 50 states or considering it?

Happy running!

Donna