Jacky's quest: 1 woman, 1 leg, 102 marathons in 102 days
BOSTON >> Jacky Hunt-Broersma runs like a woman possessed. And in a way, she is: The amputee athlete is trying to run at least 102 marathons in 102 days.
Last month, a little more than two-thirds toward her goal of setting a new world record for backto-back marathons, the South Africa native posted something on Twitter that got people talking.
“The first thing I did after my run today was take off my leg. Felt so good,” she tweeted. “Marathon 69 done. 31 marathons to go.”
That was last month, and she's still running — covering the classic 26.2mile marathon distance day in, day out, rain or shine, occasionally on a treadmill but mostly on roads and trails near her home in Gilbert, Arizona.
If her streak remains intact heading into the Boston Marathon on April 18, it'll be marathon No. 92.
Unlike the 30,000 others running the storied course, Hunt-Broersma, 46, will have done a marathon the day before. Somehow, she'll have to rally body and soul to run another the day after. And
another after that. And then eight more.
All on a carbon-fiber blade that's been her left leg ever since she lost the real thing below the knee to a rare cancer.
“You make peace with pain,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I think my pain threshold is probably quite high at the moment. It's one step at a time.”
Boston is the only certified marathon she's including in her quest. The others she's running on one of two loops near her home or indoors on a treadmill — a monotonous machine many runners derisively call the “dreadmill.”
In 2001, while she and her Dutch husband were living in the Netherlands, Hunt-Broersma was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, a rare cancer more typically seen in children. Overnight, a golf ball-sized bulge appeared on an old scar that had become tender. A biopsy confirmed the worst, and within weeks, her leg was amputated below the knee.
“The biggest struggle was accepting that part of my body was gone,” she said. (She's since made peace with that: A favorite T-shirt reads, “A Zombie Chewed It Off.”)