BOISE, Idaho — On Jan. 15, Bob Mueller crossed the finish line at the Maui Oceanfront Marathon in Hawaii. He wasn’t happy with his performance — he’d gotten a cramp and had to walk several miles, making it one of his worst marathon times ever.
“I was more relieved than exhilarated,” Mueller told the Idaho Statesman. “I was just happy I was done.”
But a few weeks later, Mueller started to appreciate the significance of finishing the race. The 69-year-old’s Hawaii marathon marked his completion of running a marathon in each of the 50 states in the U.S., a feat only a fraction of marathon runners ever achieve.
Mueller, who now lives in Garden City, Idaho, started running marathons when he turned 40. He was living in his hometown of Milwaukee at the time and was intrigued by the boss at his new job. Though the man was older than Mueller, he was an avid long-distance runner.
“He said the secret to running longer (is that) you just need to focus on pushing the distance out farther for one run a week,” Mueller said.
He tried that technique and found his body “hung in there” through the additional distance. In 1994, on his 40th birthday, he completed his first marathon, the Lakefront Marathon in Milwaukee.
The event was hosted by the Badgerland Striders, a local running club that Mueller joined. He started to focus on achieving a qualifying time for the Boston Marathon. In a few years, he had run marathons in several states on family trips or visits to neighboring states.
In 2007, he decided to work toward the goal of running a marathon in every state.
“By the time I decided I would try it, I had already done 30 marathons and had five states done,” he said.
In 2010, Mueller ran in the Boston Marathon with friends from his Milwaukee running group. After that, he said, he didn’t worry much about his completion times.
“There’s a difference between running a marathon and just finishing one,” Mueller said. “When you’re going for 50 states, you kind of give up on your time and performance.”
Mueller was running four to six marathons every year to move closer to his goal. Sometimes he would run back-to-back marathons in close states, finishing one on Saturday and the other on Sunday to cut down on travel.
That’s a slog, said Jim Szyjakowski, who met Mueller through the Badgerland Striders and finished the Boston Marathon with him.
“Doing a marathon itself is something because of the training you’ve put into it,” Szyjakowski said. “Most people will run maybe two marathons a year.”
The demanding routine eventually took its toll. In 2012, Mueller suffered a knee injury while running a marathon in Aspen, Colo., where the route begins around 8,000 feet in elevation and takes runners even higher.
He moved to Idaho in 2013 for work and took a break from marathons to recover. As he healed, he picked up running with the Boise Area Runners club. Though he’d lived in Idaho for some time, he still had to cross the Gem State off his 50 states marathon list.
After his Idaho race — the Lake Lowell Marathon in 2016 — Mueller picked up the pace again, checking off states one by one. In the last 10 months, he completed five marathons, including his final race in Hawaii.
When he crossed the finish line in Maui, Mueller became a member of the 50 States Marathon Club, which was founded in 2001 and includes just 5,130 members.
