The Backstory to the Racing Every State Goal:
In the middle of 2018, my husband and I decided to set a goal of “Racing Every State”: running a race in every state in the U.S. It’s important to note that we identify as reluctant runners: we love the experience of race days and we enjoy the feeling of accomplishment from crossing another finish line. Where we struggle is the training. We often fall into the unfortunate habit of signing up for races, creating training plans, neglecting said training plans until we look at a calendar and realize the race is only a few weeks away, and then halfheartedly running a few times before we show up at yet another start line under-trained and under-prepared. Is this a great way to race? No it is not. Do we make it work? Yep, we sure do!
At some point, our bodies are going to stop being so forgiving, and we aren’t going to be able to recover so well from running these under-trained races. Until then, we probably will not learn our lesson. In an effort to possibly combat this problem, we’ve started signing up for more and more races, hoping that the constant pressure of a race looming in the background will inspire us to train more diligently. The inspiration behind racing every state came partly from this idea and partly from our love of traveling. Running a race is a great excuse to plan another trip!
As of June 2023, we are at 18 states raced. As far as official distance that we want/need to run in each state, we’ve decided on the half marathon. Half marathons are my favorite distance to race: the training isn’t overly time consuming (when we actually do train), they are relatively easy to recover from, and it makes for a nice morning run with plenty of day left for exploring and activities when we travel.
As a caveat to this, we’ve also decided that Ragnar races also fit the bill for our state goal. We LOVE running Ragnar Relays, events where you come together with a team to complete a long race, either on road or trails, or sometimes both. Our personal favorites are Ragnar Trail races, which I’m writing more about and will link HERE when I’m done. For these races, you camp overnight and run three different loops on trails that are generally pretty rough and rugged. It’s a truly excellent time. We decided that Ragnars also work for our state races because the total distance generally adds up to be about the length of a half marathon if not longer. Also, they are the most fun races we’ve ever done, so we knew we had to include them.
Below, you’ll find links to a race recap for every state we’ve run so far. If you have recommendations for a great race in a state that we haven’t run yet, let us know in the comments. We are always looking to build our list and get our next race planned!
The Races: Year and State
2018: States Run
2019: States Run
TN OH IN WV IA
2020: State Run
LA
2021: States Run
KY MI SD SC
2022: States Run
2023: States Planned
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