From the Great Wall of China to the Golden Gate Bridge, from the icy banks of Antarctica to the steep sloping trails of Turkey Mountain, Bill and Debbie Dusch have run it all. On a marathon adventure—literally—the Concord couple has raced in all 50 states plus two continents, totaling 150 events between them.
The Dusches crossed the last state off their list in Hawaii in the middle of January. But the accomplishment has been decades in the making, and they’ve managed to have a good bit of fun along the way.
“This one is from Corning, N.Y.,” Bill Dusch, Concord’s new mayor, said. “Corning is glass. The finishing metal there is glass that they craft there in Corning. It’s the most beautiful downtown. We did one that started in Arkansas and ends in Mississippi called the Mississippi Blues. In the home of Dwight Eisenhower in Kansas, the theme of it is ‘I like Ike.’ ”
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Bill Dusch got the tradition started when his wife was pregnant with their first child. He had gained a good bit of weight, and Debbie Dusch made a comment one night while they were watching TV.
“The next morning, I got up and started running, and that was 35 years ago,” Bill Dusch said. “I lost 40 pounds in a year, changed my eating habits, changed diet, changed exercise.”
He continued his running regiment for about 15 years, racing in 5Ks and 10Ks with friends. In 1998, Bill Dusch ran his first marathon in uptown Charlotte.
“I said that was good, and the next year I ran it again,” he said. “And I added another marathon. I did two in one year.”
Bill Dusch had run between 20 and 25 marathons by 2005 when his wife decided to give it a go. The couple went down to Walt Disney World for their first joint race.
Debbie Dusch hadn’t been much of a runner beforehand. So what got her into the marathon game?
“Insanity,” she said with a laugh.
Around 2009, the couple starting realizing their hobby had taken them all across the country, and a new goal emerged: to run a marathon in each of the 50 states. They began doing as many as nine or 10 a year, traveling to San Francisco where their daughter lived at the time to Anchorage, Alaska, where Debbie Dusch encountered a baby moose along the trail.
“If you have a baby moose, you also have a mama moose,” Bill Dusch said. “So they kind of all stopped and waited.”
The race in Tulsa, Okla., came in two parts. The first half went up and down Turkey Mountain while the other half ran along flat ground. Run both, Bill Dusch said, and the prize is a yin-yang style medal with pieces that fit perfectly together. Athletes who complete just one part or the other just get half.
“Debbie likes smaller marathons in terms of number of participants,” Bill Dusch said. “I like all of it, so I’ve done things like New York City Marathon, Chicago, Boston.”
Since Bill Dusch had something of a head start, the couple had a little catching up to do so they could finish their 50th state together. They made the culminating race something of an event, traveling to Hawaii in late January.
The event caters specifically to those runners chasing the 50 state club status. Those who finish get a special medal and bib marking it as the last on the list.
“We were the only husband and wife that finished together,” Bill Dusch said. “I was looking at the 50 states club, and there’s not many husband and wife couples.”
Bill Dusch managed to complete the challenge in two decades, but his wife took even less time—12 years, to be exact. To accomplish that, the couple sometimes ran almost one race a month.
“It’s actually easier than training because you’re doing the one long run, and then you’re constantly staying in shape as opposed to ramping up,” Debbie Dusch said. “We weren’t running hard. We just kind of took it easier out there. That was actually easier, to run more.”
But the Dusches have decided to tackle more than just the 50 states. After the family ran a marathon on the Great Wall of China in 2007 when their daughter was living in Beijing, the couple realized they had now ran a race on two continents. In 2010, Bill Dusch added to the list by traveling to Antarctica with his daughter.
The two flew to Buenos Aires then to the southernmost port in the world before boarding a 300-foot vessel to cross the Drake Passage where the Atlantic, Pacific and Southern oceans come together.
“It was 30-foot seas, two and a half days of up and down, and that got us to Antarctica,” he said. “That’s where we ran the race. We had a tour in a small boat. You can go anywhere down there, and it was the most gorgeous. The running part was eh.”
With just Australia and South America on that list, the Dusches aren’t quite done with the marathon quest yet. At a total of 95, Bill Dusch said he hopes to get to 100 and also finish the big five, which would mean adding the London and Berlin races to Boston, New York and Chicago.
Debbie, however, said she didn’t have that many more races left in her.
But both agreed the adventure had been a fun one and well worth the effort. To those friends of theirs just getting into the sport, Bill Dusch said the most important thing was to take it slow, follow bodily cues and have fun.
“You need to have a plan, and our goal by doing all these is to have fun, see things and not get hurt,” he said. “Don’t worry about your time, but get a plan, work where you get your body up to the point that it can handle this because it’s a strain on the body.”