100 Marathons Before Turning 50
Devesh Khatu, a 52-year-old marathon runner, had set an ambitious goal of running 100 marathons and traveling 50 countries before turning 50. Born in India, and after spending more than 30 years in the USA, he is back to his hometown Mumbai, where he ran his 75th marathon in 2017. He shares that growing up, he wasn’t very athletic; in fact he was one of the least athletic people. In 2005, in San Francisco, some colleagues and friends of his started to run and he was willing to take up the challenge and cross off an item from his bucket list and prove to himself that he can be athletic as well.
Being the competitive person he is, he started to sign up for more marathons. Any marathon runner’s ultimate goal is to run the Boston Marathon, and qualifying for it was a major challenge for him. He started training for that and completed it after a couple of years. When in 2009, he was turning 40, he wanted to do something different and decided to run a marathon every month. He also searched for charities to run for and successfully helped raise funds for them.
A couple of years later, after running his 50th marathon, Devesh realised that 50 months were left before he turned 50 and with determination, started running a marathon every month. He loves traveling, and he combined running marathons with world travel by picking marathons in different parts of the world.
Devesh achieved the target of running 100 marathons at the 2018 Chicago Marathon, about six months ahead of his 50th birthday and before the pandemic hit the world.
When asked about how he finds the running community different in the USA from India, he responds, “In India, running is catching up now. When I started running, only a handful of people were running marathons. Now, you can see many people from India participating in the world’s major marathon events. The sport and community are more structured and organised in the US and that’s mainly because it has been going on for much longer there. In India, there are clubs and groups now in India, which still need structuring. Also, another major factor is the weather – India is much warmer and more humid. One needs to start early in the morning to find pleasant weather to workout. Then there’s traffic as well; so again, starting early in the day is the only solution.”
To summarize, in the USA, the whole running community is organised and together, and one can find any information easily, whereas, though the community is growing at a fast rate in India, it’s scattered and one finds it a task to find relevant and useful information.
One moment that Devesh distinctly remembers joyfully is qualifying for and running the Boston Marathon. For which, he signed up for the flat and fast Chicago Marathon in 2008 and started training for that. And there’s this another achievement he cherishes, where he participated in each of the World Marathon Majors (Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York City) at least once, getting his "Six Star Medal", becoming one of the first 1,000 people in the world to do so.
Devesh Khatu summarizes his running philosophy in seven words – Run Smart. Believe in Yourself. Have Fun!
Devesh’s Personal Best
- Logged marathon time of 3:18:52 in Chicago in 2008
- Has run 118 full marathons and one ultramarathon in 32 countries as of March 2021
- Got "Six Star Medal" for running in each of the World Marathon Majors - Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York City
You can find more about his journey on his blog here.
