Jacki Musgrave of Bingham, expected to accomplish a special goal early Sunday morning. She ran a marathon in Hawaii, making it the 50th state where she’s completed the 26-mile, 385-yard trek.
Musgrave and more than a dozen family members and friends left Thursday, Jan. 12 for the special event. She’s entered the Maui Oceanfront Marathon. It started at 5 a.m. The route was expected to be scenic. It was run on asphalt and the wide shoulder of the highway along the Pacific Ocean.
“I’m really excited about it,” she said. “So are those who are going along. We’ll stay in Hawaii several days and see the sights.”
The accompanying entourage includes her husband Scott, their three adult children, one of their son’s in-laws, a six-month-old granddaughter and seven friends.
Jackie, who is 52, was not a high school athlete when she grew up on a ranch in North Dakota. But the latter experience led to her career as a beef cattle research technologist at the Gundmendsen Sandhills Lab located deeper in the Sandhills northeast of Whitman. It’s a part of the University of Nebraska’s West Central Research Extension Center.
She has to plan ahead and schedule the marathon running around her work schedule.
“I never participated in athletics in high school and if I had, running distances in track would have been the least appealing to me,” said Musgrave, who has won her age group in the 10K race each of the last five Colter Runs during Fur Trade Days in Chadron.
However, she relates that a bit more than 20 years ago she wanted to lose a few pounds and found that running relieves stress. It soon became addictive.
After running on her own for about a year she entered the Heritage Days race in Alliance in 2005. Her first marathon was the Mount Rushmore Marathon in the fall of 2006. A year later she ran the Roughrider Marathon in her home state, as well as the closest of them all—the Sandhills Marathon in southern Cherry County. She’s run it again four times.
Then came the Eisenhower Marathon in Kansas in 2008, followed by one in Oklahoma City. Since her times were good enough to qualify, her fifth marathon was one of the biggest and most prestigious of them all—the Boston Marathon—in 2011. She ran it again in 2017.
Since her first Boston Marathon, she’s “been on the run,” often. For instance, she completed six of them in 2016 and seven in 2021, stretching from North Carolina to Washington state.
Her 49th marathon was in New York last Oct. 1. Since then she’s tried to keep in condition by entering a half-marathon and participating in a couple of relay races. They were Market-to-Market races between Lincoln and Omaha in which each participant runs from seven to 13 miles and the Lake to Lake from Sutherland Reservoir to Lake Maloney south of North Platte.
More than a decade ago she joined the “50-Marathon Club,” which is open to those who plan to run a marathon in every state and has already completed the jaunts in 10 states. In 2018, after Musgrave entered and won the 10K race at the Colter Run the first time, she said there were 34 Nebraskans in the 50-Marathon Club and she was among the 13 women.
At that time, she noted she planned to make Hawaii the last race on her 50-state quest. Early last week, she said she learned there were 41 other Maui Oceanfront Marathon entries who also expect to become 50-state marathoners when they complete Sunday’s race.
According to the 50-Marathon Club’s web site, 1,897 of its members have already reached the 50-state goal and she’ll be the 15th Nebraskan and the sixth woman from the Good Life State to achieve the milestone Sunday.
However, it’s obvious not all marathoners have belonged to the club.
The late Rusty Belina of Hay Springs ran marathons in all 50 states during an 11-year period from 1999 through 2009 and had completed 102 of the grueling races, including five in foreign countries, when he died in 2016. But his name is not on the list of those from Nebraska who had completed the 50-state milestone,
Musgrave has an advantage over Belina. She began marathon running much younger than he did. Although he was a life-long athlete and career coach, he was 57 when he ran his first marathon. That’s five years older than Jackie will be when she completes her 50-state aspiration.
She added that just because she reaches her goal, it doesn’t mean she plans to retire from distance running after she returns from Hawaii. She says she’s still addicted to it.