Jeff Maher is supposed to be retired from marathons after he hung up his running shoes, supposedly for good, in 2019.
By that point, he’d already completed dozens of the 26.2-mile races, including some of the top races in the U.S.
But after a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis the following year, Maher laced his running shoes back up and started running again.
Now, the Overland Park native is preparing to take on his biggest and most ambitious athletic feat yet with the World Marathon Challenge, which will have him running seven marathons on seven continents in seven days, early next year.
The challenge begins with a marathon on the continent of Antarctica at Ultima Base. Then he’ll travel to and run in Cape Town, South Africa; Perth, Australia; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Madrid, Spain; and Fortaleza, Brazil. The competition ends with one final race in Miami.
Maher started running marathons at 40
Maher, who was always a pretty athletic guy, was looking for a way to stay active. However, in 2007 at age 40, he was starting to worry about the impact basketball, his sporting activity of choice, might have on his knees and ankles. It certainly didn’t help that it was getting harder to keep up with the younger guys on the court.
So, he started looking for something new.
“I was looking for something to do that would kind of keep me busy and keep me somewhat fit,” he said.
Maher said he was never really a “natural runner” and hadn’t been a track or cross country athlete growing up, but he was starting to wonder if he could do a marathon and really wanted to get his wife to try it too.
The pair set out to run the Chicago Marathon that year, and they both did. While his wife was “one and done,” Maher wanted to keep going.
For one thing, he didn’t feel like he’d done as well as he could have in Chicago. He finished, but excessive heat that day made it a pretty miserable experience and kept him from doing as well as he could have.
So, about a month later, he went to Oklahoma with his running coach, Eladio Valdez, and Maher improved his time, finishing the race two hours earlier than in Chicago, with a time of four hours and 11 minutes.
After that, he caught the bug and wanted to see how much better he could get.
“I started to really train hard and race, and get to the point where I had probably felt like I got the best out of myself from a physical standpoint,” Maher said.
Still, he kept running, though he started to see it more as a fun, social thing than a competitive one.
After more than a decade of that, he stopped running marathons, looking instead at golfing and other sports.
His marathon retirement didn’t last long
Maher was diagnosed with MS in 2020 after experiencing numbness and vision issues. At the time, his neurologist told him that diet and exercise would be really important for him.
One of his first thoughts was, “Can I run again?”
“She said, ‘Every MS patient is different. It’s called the snowflake disease for a reason. Everybody’s affected differently by it. You won’t know until you try,’” Maher recalls.
So, Maher started running again.
“I was able to get back to running without any, you know, problems, any symptoms, any flare-ups with the MS,” he said.
Before long, he was thinking about whether he could complete the then-six Abbott World Marathon Majors races. He’d already completed the three in the U.S. in Chicago, New York and Boston, but wanted to look at the international ones in Berlin, London and Tokyo.
He called it “a lifetime bucket list goal” to run all six. So he did just that, running the London and Berlin in back-to-back weekends in 2022, followed by Tokyo in 2024.
Then, Sydney in Australia was officially added to the list last year, which he completed with his son Matthew.
Recently, Abbott World Marathon Majors also added Cape Town in South Africa to the list, and could soon add an eighth race in Shanghai. Maher wants to do those too.
Training looks different for the World Marathon Challenge
Maher might have done all these other marathons in the past — many of which are, on their own, bucket list worthy for some runners — but now, he’s looking to do something even harder.
The seven-day, seven-continent World Marathon Challenge begins on Jan. 30, 2027, in Antarctica, and ends on Feb. 5 with one last marathon in Miami. That will come out to more than 180 miles in one week for the 50 runners participating from all over the world.
This time, Maher is running wearing a charity bib, donated as a memorial for his friend Susan Hurley, the founder of CharityTeams, who died last year from ovarian cancer. As part of that, Maher is also raising $50,000 for her memorial fund, called the Susan Hurley Fund.
Maher, who will turn 60 next spring, will readily admit the marathon challenge is unlike anything he’s prepared for before.
“Having never run back-to-back marathons and being forced to run seven back-to-back marathons on little to no sleep, I’m going to have to prepare very differently,” he said.
A big part of his training has been focused on storing up energy. In the past, he might have tried to finish races as fast as he could, but now, it’s only about making it to the finish line for these back-to-back races.
All that said, he’s still training with Valdez, from The Runner’s Edge of Kansas City, who has been helping Maher train since his early days as a marathon runner.
Valdez, who is himself a marathon runner and has done some ultramarathons, thinks taking on the World Marathon Challenge is maybe a little “crazy.”
“It’s not normal if you’re not nervous, so I’m definitely nervous for Jeff,” Valdez said. “Can he do it? Absolutely. Will he do it? We’ll find out.”
Part of the training plan will have Maher running a marathon in Kansas City this fall, followed by one in Des Moines, Iowa, the next day, marking the end of phase one of a two-phase plan.
After that, he’ll add a sixth running day to his weekly running schedule, which currently consists of five running days and two rest days.
“Ultimately, I want to build up to where I’m running four days in a row of double-digit miles and pretty consistently getting that accomplished,” Maher said, “so I know what it feels like.”
Valdez is still writing up what exactly phase two will entail for Maher.
“He’s going to find out what he’s made of, and my goal is to help him get to the start line healthy,” he said. “If I can get him there healthy, I did my part, and then I cross my fingers like the rest of us, and see what happens.”
“I’m very proud of him, I’m very happy for him, and I’m very scared for him; those are all in the same breath,” Valdez added with a bit of a laugh.
For now, Maher feels like he’s on the right track and has the support system he needs, complete with Valdez as his running coach, plus physical therapy and massage therapy. He’s also looking at adding a sports psychologist to the mix at his wife’s urging.
“It’s going to take a village to get this done for me,” he said. “I feel like I’m putting a good team behind me to kind of help get my body prepared, and hopefully my mind prepared for it because it’s not going to be like anything I’ve ever done.”
As for the future, he’s not sure he’ll be done after this, but he’s also not looking to add ultramarathon running or anything more extreme to his resume right now.
“I think it’s important to always kind of push yourself and look for growth in some form or fashion,” Maher said. “This is probably a big enough goal out there to accomplish that I’ll be set for a little bit.”
Read about another marathon runner: Shannon O’Shea, pediatric orthotist/prosthetist and marathon runner
