ASHLAND — Later this month, on a Sunday, Debbie Haynes will wake up and face the day just like everyone else.
She’ll have the same physical needs like food and water, maybe some coffee. She’ll have to put on clothes. She’ll have to brush her teeth. She’ll have to look ahead into her day and decide to make it a good one. She may utter a prayer or two.
But on this Sunday — May 21 — Haynes will wake up roughly 1,500 miles away from her home in Ashland to accomplish a feat not many people have achieved.
On that day, Haynes, 64, will run the Queen Bee Marathon in Billings, Montana. It will mark the 50th and final state in a journey that started — whether she knew it or not — 45 years ago.
Running a marathon in each state is a thing people do. There are around 1.1 million runners who finish a marathon each year, according to a 2019 report by the International Institute for Race Medicine. There are 5,169 members of the 50 States Marathon Club. Many others are working on the same goal.
So Haynes will not be the first to do this and she won’t be the last. But it’s still impressive, said her friend and walking buddy, Nancy Lastocy.
“It’s a huge accomplishment. She should be proud,” Lastocy said.
Most runners accomplish anywhere from one to four marathons each year. Traveling to and from faraway states costs money. So, running a marathon in each state takes time, money and a tremendous amount of determination and grit, Lastocy said.
For Haynes, the journey started in college. She enrolled at Liberty Baptist College in 1978, now known as Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Haynes was on the school’s cross country team. That’s when she fell in love with the sport.
“I never played soccer, softball or basketball. But running? That’s always been my niche,” she said.
In 1981, she learned of a run in Hagerstown, Maryland. The JFK 50-Mile Challenge. She ran it and subsequently discovered she’s pretty fast — 12th in the U.S. fast.
Hence she kept running. She ran in marathons in Toledo, Columbus, Youngstown, Cleveland. Anywhere. Haynes reckons her heel-spurred feet have trotted 100,000 miles through the years.
Recently, Haynes finished a run along a farm near her home. It was a crisp, sunny day in early May. She had finished her morning cleaning shift at Brethren Care Village. After her run, she took care of her mother by taking her grocery shopping and then worked another evening shift at the YMCA.
As she spoke, Haynes remembered running a marathon in Cleveland. Her parents took her to the race and, around 500 yards to the finish line, her father — Don Richey, former mayor of Ashland — ran with her.
“He had hard-soled shoes and jeans on, but he ran with me for probably 500 yards. I remember it like it was yesterday. He was running on my right hand side. He said, ‘Well, Debbie, I can’t keep up with you.’ So I said, ‘OK, bye’ and I finished the race,” she said.
She said that story is one of the fondest memories of her early days of running.
In 2002 she wed Dick Haynes, a 1967 Black River High School graduate who excelled in football, basketball and track. He also served in the U.S. Army.
“He supported everything I did about running,” she said. “He was just there.”
During a wet and muddy race in Indiana, Haynes remembers him handing her a pair of clean shoes midway through the marathon.
In 2006, she qualified for the Boston Marathon by running her fastest race — 3 hours and 58 minutes. The 47 year-old finished the Boston Marathon that year in 4 hours and 26 minutes, according to the race’s results archive.
“That’s when I decided to run in all the states,” she said.
By then, she had already hit a number of states. She said she could have finished the goal in five years.
However, fate had a different idea. Her husband — her support — died in 2011. He was 62.
“I still talk to him when I run,” she said, remembering a time during a marathon at Crater Lake in Oregon.
Around 14 miles into the run, the tired part of her body began telling her she couldn’t keep going.
“I just remember him saying ‘Yes you can, Deb.’ He’s still my inspiration when I run,” she said.
Haynes had been married once before; the marriage ended in divorce. And she married again, in 2013, after Dick Haynes passed away. Seven years later, her new husband died.
The widow, mother of three and divorcee said she just sticks to running now.
“I don’t have time for the guys,” she said.
She’s not exaggerating. To train for marathons, she runs anywhere from 10 to 12 hours a week. The marathon in Montana will be her fourth this year, hitting New Mexico in January and Rhode Island in April.
When she’s not working, running or taking care of her mom, visiting with her grown children (who live in North Carolina, Massachusetts and Ohio) she walks with Lastocy.
“She’s had some crap happen to her in life,” Lastocy, her walking friend, said.
Lastocy is also a widow. She lost her husband to prostate cancer in 2020. The two met working at the YMCA in Ashland.
Their loss served as what Lastocy referred to as a “common denominator.” They soon grew close walking, talking about life and family and dreams.
“I’m not a runner. I’ll walk with her everyday, but that’s it,” she said, laughing.
Lastocy, 69, plans on making the trip to Montana with Haynes. She’ll be waiting at the finish line for her “Energizer Bunny” friend. After the race, the pair will travel down to Denver to hike Rocky Mountain National Park’s Gem Lake Trail — where her late husband’s ashes were spread just two years prior on Mother’s Day.
Lastocy said she isn’t particularly religious like her friend. But she said she can’t escape the feeling that God brought them together to help fill the void left behind by loss.
“I’m just glad I get to help her make this (dream) come true. You never know when your ticket is going to be punched. So I get to encourage her to finish it because life’s too short,” she said.
Even if Haynes “finishes it” on May 21 by running a marathon in every U.S. state, she’s not finished. Her next goal is to run a marathon in each continent, with plans to visit Antarctica in December 2024, “when it’s warmer there,” she said.
And after that?
“I want to run a marathon when I’m 100 years-old.”
