She Ran 104 Marathons in 104 Days—On One Leg
Meet Jacky Hunt-Broersma, the amputee who just set a record for most consecutive days spent running a marathon
When Jacky Hunt-Broersma woke up last Sunday, May 1, she felt like she should go outside and run. That urge wasn’t out of the ordinary—because on each of the past 104 days, she had run a full marathon, 26.2 miles, in trails around her home in the Phoenix area, on treadmills, and in the Boston Marathon. She’d covered 2,724.8 miles in those 104 days, nearly the equivalent of running from Los Angeles to Miami. Pending a verification process, Hunt-Broersma will be the new world record holder for most consecutive days completing a marathon.
Oh, and I should mention: Hunt-Broersma is a cancer survivor and an amputee, running with a blade on her left leg.
Last Sunday, though, Hunt-Broersma stayed off the trails. And more than any other time in the previous three months, her muscles felt tight and tired. She was done.
Hunt-Broersma, a 46-year-old from South Africa who now lives in Arizona, didn’t actually start running until well into adulthood. As she told Runners World, “I was the kid at school who used to hide in the bathroom when we had track workouts.” Twenty years ago, her life changed when she received a diagnosis for a rare form of bone cancer called Ewing’s sarcoma. Doctors told her that the cancer had attacked nerves in her leg, and they had to amputate. Suddenly, she was being wheeled into surgery, and Hunt-Broersma found herself 26-years-old without her left leg. At first, she felt ashamed of the prosthetic. She almost always wore pants, and many of her co-workers didn’t even know that she had lost her leg.
That was around the time when, for the first time in her life, Hunt-Broersma started running seriously.
She hated that people looked at her and assumed she couldn’t run. She describes herself as stubborn and wanted to prove everybody wrong. So Hunt-Broersma got fitted for running blades, and started to jog. She remembers thinking, “I want to try it and just see.”
She ran a 5K then a 10K and then, in 2016, her first half marathon. “Running,” she said, “changed my life.” She finished the Chicago Marathon shortly thereafter, only to want to see how much further she could go. Hunt-Broersma entered a 100 mile ultramarathon in March of 2020 when it got cancelled due to the pandemic. Instead of giving up, Hunt-Broersma said, “I discovered an amputee had never done 100 miles on a treadmill, so I thought, ‘Why not go for it and see what happens?’” She finished in 23 hours and 38 minutes.
While Hunt-Broersma searched for another feat to accomplish, she learned of the consecutive marathon record, which stood at 100 days. She decided to try and break it—if she could raise money for a worthy cause. That’s how she teamed up with Amputee Blade Runners, a nonprofit that provides disabled children with running blades.
She set out on January 17, and day after day logged 26.2 miles. On day 35, she ran a half marathon, stopped for a break, then ran another 13.1 miles. When people online said she’d “cheated” she went out and ran another marathon—without stopping this time.
“You know it’s gonna hurt,” Hunt-Broersma told NBC News. “But you kind of just keep pushing yourself and keep going for it.” One day, she broke down crying halfway through the race and considered quitting, but she convinced herself to just go one more mile. That mile turned into another and then another, and soon, she finished the run. The secret, she said, was focusing “a step at a time,” and making an effort to “just hold on to hope.”
All in all, she raised nearly $200,000. “I had a goal at the start of this challenge to raise enough money to at least help one amputee, and now we can help at least 50,” Hunt-Broersma wrote on Instagram. “This will change so many peoples lives as it did mine. “
Next, Hunt-Broersma is training for a grueling 250-mile race in October. One thing is for sure: she’s done plenty of training. And each mile she runs, she’ll be proving just how much humans can accomplish, no matter what obstacles are put in their path. “It's taught me how strong you can be, and how much running is so mental,” Hunt-Broersma said. “If you're mentally strong and in the game, you can do anything.”
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