INSTITUTE, W.Va. — Tom Guetzloff had been an active guy and a former college athlete, but he’d let himself go — and for good reason.
Guetzloff was still new to his job as a chemistry professor at West Virginia State University, his children were in third grade and kindergarten and his wife was very, very ill.
Christine Guetzloff had been diagnosed with stage three ovarian cancer two years earlier. She had surgery and round after round of chemotherapy. Christine had only about three weeks to live when she decided to have a hard talk with Tom.
“You need to take care of yourself so you can take care of the kids,” she told him. “The kids can’t go without both of their parents.”
Tom knew she was right. He’d gained weight. He was 5-foot-10 and had gotten to about 250 pounds.
“I was always eating fast food. I was eating convenience. I was definitely stress eating.”
He made a promise to pay attention to his own health.
“My first goal was to be healthy. So what I decided to do to stay healthy was to run, and I kept running farther and farther and farther — and I decided to run a marathon.”
And this year, 14 years later, he has proof positive that he took his promise seriously.
On June 25, in Koana, Hawaii, he achieved his goal of running marathons in 50 states before his 50th birthday.
As he does when he finishes every marathon, Guetzloff erupted into a variety of celebratory poses: a prayer, a victory spread, a dab and an Usain Bolt lightning strike.
“It was probably one of the toughest ones I’ve ever run,” he said. “It started out at 75 degrees and finished in the mid-90s. When you’re running on the road in Kona, it’s lava on both sides and the road is black.
“I was doing really well, running about 11-minute miles and about mile 17 I cramped up. So then I just walked it in, as they say.”
Diagnosis and promise
Guetzloff moved around a lot as a kid, from Illinois to Connecticut to Wisconsin. He was an all-state track performer and a decathlete.
At Division 3 St. Norbert College in Wisconsin, he was an all-conference tailback while earning his chemistry degree. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry at South Dakota State.
Christine, also a chemist, had grown up on a farm in South Dakota. She was active, too, enjoying hiking and the outdoors.
The Guetzloffs, still a young married couple with young children, were on vacation when they got terrible news about Christine’s health.
They had been in Oregon, hiking and seeing the rugged landscape. They then stopped off in South Dakota to see her family. Christine had noticed something wasn’t normal. She thought it was simple acid reflux.
She went to a doctor, who suggested some antacids. But tests continued. She had her gall bladder checked. Then there was an ultrasound. That was what uncovered her cancer.
Christine had surgery for ovarian cancer in South Dakota and then came back to West Virginia when she was able. She fought for a little more than two years, going through difficult chemotherapy.
Christine passed away in 2003 at age 34. Tom ran his first marathon in 2004.
From promise to completion
As Guetzloff took on his goal of completing marathons in 50 states, he became more certain and more vocal about it. Even some of his admirers would express their doubt.
“That’s a great goal,” they’d say, “but are you sure you want to do that?”
“I’m gonna do it,” Guetzloff would say.
The race he concluded in Hawaii was a milestone, but also just another marathon in the books. Guetzloff has run 65 total marathons since making his promise.
He has benefited from a partnership on his running tour of the country. His current wife Holly, is a first-grade teacher at Huntington’s St. Joseph Catholic School. Holly enjoys hiking, the outdoors and travel.
To make his feat as efficient as possible, Guetzloff took some states as clusters. At one point, he ran six New England marathons in six days, covering Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Some states he ran as doubles: Oregon and Washington, Idaho and Wyoming, for example.
Guetloff’s mother died in March and requested that her funeral be planned so that he could finish marathons in New Mexico and Colorado.
“One of her dying wishes was make sure the funeral happened so I could run both races,” Guetzloff said. “She knew if the funeral was on those dates there was no way I could get those in. It was a very nice gesture.”
He points to heaven after finishing marathons now, as his own gesture to his mother.
His daughter, 22-year-old Megan Guetzloff, ran three of the marathons with him. His son Jake is 20.
“I am proud of him,” said Megan, who graduated from West Virginia State with her chemistry degree.
She said her father’s initial promise was carried through by determination and habit.
“It’s all about the mind when you’re running,” Megan said over the telephone.
Guetzloff is a creature of habit. He trains by coming in early each day to his job at West Virginia State, where he is also the cross country coach, and then heading out to run.
He runs at least seven miles a day — usually alternating to do seven miles on an elliptical trainer to spare his knees — with one day off to recuperate and taking on one long day each week of 10, 15 or 20 miles. He runs at least one marathon every month.
“I’m always in marathon season,” Guetzloff said.
He has an mp3 player loaded with seven or eight hours of music to help him keep his pace: some Led Zepplin, some Ozzy Osborne — “Ozzy Osborne gets me through a lot; you need the beat” — some Aerosmith, some Van Halen and some 80s classics.
He is very particular about his shoes, too. Every year on Black Friday, he buys 6 to 8 pair of Asics. He keeps an active pair of training shoes and an active pair of marathon shoes. He also keeps a log, written in a book, of how long the shoes have been in the rotation. When the Asics hit 400 miles, it’s time to open the next box.
He runs every marathon in a West Virginia State University T-shirt, to represent the community where he is known affectionately as “Dr. G.”
He intends to keep running as a habit, although there’s no need to aim for a marathon in every state a second time around. Some of his friends have suggested a new goal — 7 continents in 7 days. “If you guys pay the cost” is his response.
Guetzloff does plan a marathon at Disney World to celebrate his 50th birthday, which is next Jan. 6. That marathon will be a repeat of the first marathon he ran after his promise to remain healthy.
Finishing a marathon at Disney evokes a pleasant feeling. “It’s very emotional because that’s where I started, and you just feel like you’re a kid.”
Megan Guetzloff, who has cheered her dad all the way, doesn’t think he’ll slow down much.
“I can see him still doing it,” she said. “After how many years he’s done it, he has to do ’em.”