Jerod Honrath has crossed more than 100 marathon finish lines that spanned all 50 states and also on 5 continents. (Photo by Rasy Ran)
Neighbor Jerod Honrath is running out of things to put on his bucket list.
In October he finished his goal of running a marathon in all 50 states, and he did it with an average finishing time of 3:08 hours and a top speed of 2:50.
Today he has run marathons on five continents, and he’s running a marathon in Cape Town, South Africa, this month to make six, with plans to run another in Antarctica — because that’s a thing — as soon as possible.
He didn’t originally set out to run marathons in all 50 states, until one night a friend asked him how many states he’d already run, and he realized it was almost half. When she asked if he was going to run all 50 he figured, “I might as well,” he recalls. “So I really cranked the last 26 states out in about two and a half years.”
He ran a marathon almost every other weekend in 2015, he says. At that rate, he never had to prepare for a race; he just used each marathon as practice for the next one.
Honrath, who runs with White Rock Running Co-op, is a criminal intelligence officer with the Dallas Police Department, and he credits his first patrol officer with introducing him to running.
“He encouraged me to run, trained with me and we completed my first marathon together in 2002,” Honrath explains, and now he tries to pay it forward by doing the same for other newbie runners.
In total Honrath has run 120 marathons and ultra marathons. He ran his first 100-mile race in November and finished in less than 30 hours. He plans to run more 100-milers, although he says it’s an entirely different beast than regular marathons.
“It’s very mental,” he explains. “You have to be very strong-willed. It’s going to be painful, and you have to fight through it.”
In 2016, he hopes to complete enough 100-milers in order to gain entry into the Badwater Ultra 135 mile race in 2017.
He’d also like to run the 2017 World Marathon Challenge, which is seven marathons in seven days on seven continents, in order to raise awareness and funds for the Dallas Police Department Assist the Officer Foundation, which helps officers and their families during times of need.
