For many people who have taken on the daunting task of running a marathon, it tops the list of athletic feats they will accomplish in their lifetime. But Jeff Maher of Overland Park is taking that a few (thousand) steps further.
From January 30 to February 5, 2027, he is going to run seven marathons in seven days. And that’s not all: each of those marathons will take place on a different continent as a part of the World Marathon Challenge. The challenge was first created in 2015, and since then 292 people have successfully completed it.
Maher will start his first race in Antarctica. From there, Maher will run marathons in South Africa, Australia, the United Arab Emirates, Spain and Brazil before ending with a race in Miami.
Over the course of the week, he will have to get all of his sleep on flights in between each race.
“There's doubt for sure in it, but I've got a good team around me,” he told KCUR. “I've got a physical therapist that I work with. I've got a massage therapist. I've got a running coach. I've got a nutrition guide. So I'm going to have a whole team around me to kind of get me to the finish line. Hopefully, seven finish lines.”
Maher decided to do the challenge after his friend Susan Hurley passed away from ovarian cancer last November. He wants to raise $50,000 for a fund created in her name.
“That was the main reason. It was a good friend of mine that passed, and I decided I was going to do this to honor her,” Maher said.
After running over two dozen marathons around the U.S. in his 40s and early 50s, Maher thought he was done participating in marathons by 2019. But then, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
“My neurologist sat me down and said, ‘You know, Jeff, what's really important is diet and exercise, and it's going to be even more important for you moving forward.’ And so I asked her if I could run again,” Maher explained. "And she said, ‘Your body will tell you, it's the snowflake disease. Everybody is kind of affected differently by it. You won't know until you try, so go give it a shot.’ And fortunately, when I went back to running, it didn't bother me and didn't cause any flare-ups. So, I got back into running because of that.”
Since then, he has run in major marathons around the world in places like Berlin, London, Tokyo and Sydney.
- Jeff Maher, marathoner
