More Than 10,000 Miles

I can't believe I know someone like this. And I'm married to him, too.

Let me start with a number, because it's the fastest way to explain what I'm dealing with here: more than 10,000 miles.

Not driven. Not biked. Run. On foot, one step at a time, across states and countries and an entire continent, almost always for somebody else's benefit.

I live with this person. He leaves his shoes by the door like a normal man. He loves stand-up comedy, his favorite government agency is NASA, he loves a big road trip, and is a self-professed science and marketing nerd. 

He's been running far for a long time, but the ultrarunning expeditions started in 2008.

Before the big stuff — before Shan Runs Across America or Extremely Outside — he ran 195 miles from Chicago to Indianapolis for Medals4Mettle, an organization that collects finisher medals from runners and gives them to kids and adults fighting serious illness. That was his first run for a cause. He was just a guy who figured his legs might be useful to someone.

Then 410 miles from Kentucky to Wisconsin, straight up through Illinois, to raise money for Chicago Run, a nonprofit that gets city kids moving.

Then 166 miles across Panama, from Panama City to Los Santos, to help pay for a new cafeteria at an elementary school.

I want to point out that these are the warm-up acts.

2020: across America.

Then came the one most people know about. In the middle of a pandemic, weeks after losing his job, Shan ran 3,255 miles from San Francisco to the Connecticut shoreline. Ninety-four days. Roughly 35 miles a day, every day, over the Rockies before winter could stop him in his tracks.

He raised over $45,000 for Foodshare along the way — turning his own tough times into groceries for families having a worse time. Runner's World covered it. So did most of Connecticut. I was standing at the finish line on December 1, 2020, windburned and masked up (because Covid), knowing I was witnessing something rare.

2022: the entire East Coast.

Two years later, the obvious next step was to become the first person to run the full length of the East Coast Greenway — 2,960 miles from Key West, Florida, to the Canadian border in Calais, Maine. April 16 to July 2. Seventy-eight days.

I rode alongside him on a bicycle hauling all our gear in a trailer, which gave me the best view of a man running forty miles a day for two and a half months. The run raised nearly $20,000 for the East Coast Greenway Alliance.

And then at the finish line in Calais, he got down on one knee to pop the question! I said yes. We got married that October.

2023: the West Coast.

Having run the entire East Coast of the country, he did the sensible thing and went and ran the length of the West Coast — following the entire Pacific Coast Bicycle Route from Canada to Imperial Beach, CA, with me on the bike again; we coined this trip our Honeymoon. And it really did feel like it. The sunsets, the cute coastal towns. Just a lovely, physically demanding, exhausting, romantic honeymoon that lasted almost 2 months and took us almost 2000 miles.  

If you’re absorbing all of this, you can see that my husband has now run all over America. Every which way. East to West, South to North, North to South. Even though I was by his side for 2 of those trips, I'm still blown away. 

But wait, there’s more.

2025: all 169 of them.

Last fall he ran through every single one of Connecticut's 169 towns — the first person known to do it. Thirty-four days, September 8 to October 10, covering 1,091 miles. Then, the morning after he finished, he ran the Eversource Hartford Marathon as a cool-down. An extra 26.2 miles, because at that point what's another marathon?

It raised money for the Connecticut Children's Foundation and Medals4Mettle — which means seventeen years after that first 195-mile run for Medals4Mettle in 2008, he brought the whole thing full circle and into our own backyard. We run the Connecticut chapter of Medals4Mettle now, out of our house in Southbury.

And that's just the expeditions.

That doesn't count the 50-plus ultramarathon races he's finished — several of which he's won outright. It doesn't count the 1000 Miles to Light, a relay race held in Australia in summer 2021, or the Erie Canal Trail, aka our East Coast Greenway test run, or the assorted multiday "fun runs" - like running 200-on-100 through Vermont in 2023. The 10,000 miles doesn't count his day-to-day training.

Add up just the expeditions — Chicago to Indianapolis, Kentucky to Wisconsin, across Panama, across America, up the East Coast, down the West Coast, and around all 169 towns in Connecticut — and you're at more than 10,000 miles before you've counted a single race. Ten thousand miles, for causes that have nothing to do with him personally. Food banks. Sick kids. City kids who need somewhere to run. A school cafeteria in Panama.

What gets me about Shan is that none of this comes with a drumroll. He quietly ponders, does research into the where, what, and why, we spend time planning, and then he just starts running, and keeps going. And many days or weeks later, there's a finish line in some town you’ve never heard of, a very proud wife greeting a very tired man (if she's not riding alongside him), and another check for a charity.

I've met accomplished people. I have never met anyone who looks at a couple thousand miles and thinks, sure, that seems doable — and then goes and does it. Again. And again. On different continents, in different decades, for different people who needed the money more than he did.

That's my husband.

I can't believe I know someone like this.