With 4 miles to go, Ellen Hunter Gans reached for her phone.
Her muscles screamed but mental energy soared, lungs drawing in steady breaths with each stride.
The past week had been a blur: seven marathons on seven continents in seven days. Honestly unfathomable, if one lets themselves dwell on it too long. But amidst memories of Antarctic snow and Turkish rain and the inability to keep time zones straight, Ellen's mind now pivoted to her husband and their sons, Jameson and Hunter, back home in Minneapolis.
She pulled up Google on her phone, minding her steps so as not to trip in the final stretch, and searched "Justin Jefferson Griddy." Ellen scrolled through videos of the Vikings receiver celebrating in the end zone and studied his moves.
Football & foot races
If you would have asked her 30 years ago, Ellen never would have envisioned herself in this situation: either completing The Great World Race (that's 183.4 miles of running, not to mention the air miles) or self-assigning the Justin Jefferson homework.
She grew up in a baseball-centric home in St. Paul, where she played Little League with Joe Mauer — he was just "Joey" then — and regularly watched Twins games with her parents and siblings.
"My mother stopped parenting during the '87 and '91 World Series," she quipped. "Like, I could have gone to Nebraska and joined a band of traveling lounge singers, and she wouldn't have noticed.
"We'd watch the Super Bowl, but we weren't avid football fans by any means."
Ellen wasn't much of a running fan at first, either. During her one and only year of junior varsity track, the coach barely bothered to learn her name. ("I can't blame him; I was that bad," she says.) But while backpacking around Europe in college, the non-runner shocked her family by training for her first marathon.
Then during her time at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University, Ellen met her husband — a standout linebacker for the national championship team — and found herself in a community truly passionate about the pigskin.
"The entire culture revolved around football," Ellen emphasized.
Football and running are weaved throughout her life in subtle — and sometimes less subtle — ways, down to body types. Coming from a family built more for endurance than power — "We're all the same size" — Ellen jokes now that she's disrupted the genetic pool of her husband, built of power lifters, shotput throwers and football players.
The genetic blend seems to have worked out, however.
The couple's two sons (Jameson, 11, and Hunter, 9) were quickly drawn to the gridiron. Jameson first played flag football in first grade, then later joined the NFL Flag Football league through the Vikings and truly fell in love with the sport.
"Jameson enjoyed soccer, baseball, lacrosse, basketball, but nothing compared to the way he came alive when he tried football," Ellen said. "He's obsessed."
Now on to tackle football and with Hunter starting flag this winter, there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.
Both boys are faithful Justin Jefferson fans.
"There was a whole year where they basically didn't walk; their method of locomoting was Griddy-ing around the house," Ellen laughed. "It was pretty spectacular to watch.
"It's just his talent. Jameson wants to be a quarterback, but he's so impressed with all of Jefferson's catches that he'll go around the house tossing footballs to himself," she added.
'I'm not fast; I'm stubborn'
Though Jameson hasn't yet shared his mother's love of running, and she's not sure he ever will, he enjoys telling people he's already run a marathon.
Don't worry. He hasn't. Not exactly, anyway.
But Ellen did run the 2013 Boston Marathon while carrying Jameson in utero. It had taken her 11 tries to qualify because, as she says, "I'm not fast; I'm stubborn," and she'd trained months for the prestigious race.
Ellen's pregnancy slowed her down a bit from her typical pace, leading her to be stopped just a quarter-mile short after domestic terrorists detonated bombs near the finish line, killing three and injuring nearly 300 more. Thankfully, Ellen and her unborn son were physically unscathed.
She and her sister-in-law Sarah, who had crossed the finish line shortly before and also escaped injury, didn't allow the harrowing experience to stop them from running; in fact, they only found bigger challenges.
Ellen has 37 marathons (including one in the U.K.) under her belt, as well as an Ironman Triathlon and several ultramarathons, even winning two. ("They were very small," she clarifies.) It was while training to run another ultra with Sarah that she came across the Great World Race.
Seven marathons. Seven continents. Seven days.
Ellen couldn't shake the intrigue. A passionate traveler, she's unofficially made it her goal to keep up with her age in years by countries visited, and she always dreamed of a grand overseas adventure upon reaching the "empty nester" stage.
But in 2022 after years of seeking answers, Ellen was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a degenerative genetic disorder that affects the body's connective tissues.
It's clear when you speak with her that the condition is a footnote to Ellen's story, not the main storyline. She mentions it nonchalantly, as an aside, during this interview held via videoconference.
"I don't know what my body will be like in 10 years," she says, leaning forward in a sun-soaked room that adds sharp contrast to long, soft curls spilling over her shoulder. She smiles. "So, Carpe diem. Seize the day. So, yeah. I jumped on this."
Many factors could have convinced Ellen to move on from the borderline fanatical idea. A health condition. Schedule challenges. Finances.
But as reiterated more than once, when Ellen decides to do something, she's stalwart in making it happen.
She bided her time before bringing up the idea to Sarah at a Foo Fighters concert at Target Field.
"I waited until we'd each had a drink," she admitted, laughing. "Then told her, 'I have to confess something to you.' "
Ellen apologetically told Sarah she could support her in the upcoming ultra but could no longer physically participate. Why? Because she'd found something much, much bigger and, understanding her limits, couldn't realistically tackle both.
"Sarah just immediately said, 'Oh, I want to do that, too,' " Ellen recalled.
And that was that. They didn't have financial sponsors but bootstrapped their way into registering for the race … after convincing their families.
"It would be about half the cost [of the entire experience] just to travel to Antarctica," Ellen noted, "so selling it to my husband was, 'Look, it's a bargain.' "
From Wolf's Fang to Miami
And so Sarah and Ellen met the once-in-a-lifetime experience head on.
On Nov. 14, 2024, they arrived in Wolf's Fang, Antarctica, for the first marathon and what turned out to be Ellen's favorite of the group.
From Wolf's Fang to Cape Town, South Africa
From Cape Town to Perth, Australia
From Perth to Istanbul, Turkey (Asian Leg)
From the Asian side of Istanbul to the European side of Istanbul
From Istanbul (Europe) to Cartegena, Colombia
And from Cartegena to Miami
Ellen doesn't hesitate when asked her favorite race; it's easily Antarctica, the most novel of all the stops that offered a breathtaking backdrop. They ran the Wolf's Fang race a day earlier than planned to avoid a dangerous storm that would have prohibited the event from happening, and many participants questioned Ellen and Sarah ahead of time about cold-weather attire.
Minnesotans, don't ya know?
"It can be brutal there … but there wasn't a cloud in the sky that day," Ellen said. "It was 5-ish degrees, which, for a Minnesotan, we were like, 'Whatever.' And the sun was so intense down there, like, so intense. I mean, I was taking off layers and sweating. A lot of other people were really cold, but Sarah and I were great."
The most difficult? The marathon on the European side of Istanbul, from which the racers took off at 9:30 p.m. and jogged on broken, uneven cobblestone under frigid, damp, windy — and dark — conditions.
"Each marathon is locally owned and operated, which I appreciate … but it meant for some variation in route quality," Ellen explained. "And the funny thing is, even though it was the middle of the night, the entire Bosphorus Strait was lined with people fishing. They were back-casting into us as we're running. You're like, 'What is happening?'
"We're tired already, and that was really tough. I had to dig deep for that one," she added.
A private jet took the group to Antarctica, but a different plane took them from Cape Town and on to each remaining destination, almost always flying overnight. And while the plane had been used by The Rolling Stones on their last tour and did have beds that laid mostly flat, no screens and no Wi-Fi created unrelaxing environments for some.
"I spent more than twice as much time running as I did sleeping that week," Ellen said.
An ode to Jets
The biggest hurdle of the trip occurred while transferring their luggage after Australia.
"I was crowded onto a coach, and all of a sudden I had what I thought was a charley horse. A stabbing pain in the back of my leg," Ellen said, describing it as a pain more unbearable than breaking her leg or natural childbirth. "The tendons in the back of your knee, I thought I had torn one. That's how bad it was."
Once again, stubborn.
Ellen pushed through the mysterious injury (later determined to be a venomous spider bite that could have killed her) for her final four marathons, wrapping up in the electric environment of Miami. Friends and family members of multiple participants crowded the finish line, cheering for the runners as they each broke through an individual tape — a feature unique to the Great World Race.
Ellen's family hadn't been able to make the trip, but certainly were there in spirit as she approached the final leg of her adventure.
"I never would have thought I'd have the energy to Griddy," she chuckled. "I mean, when I was looking at this in advance, I pictured myself having to lie down and roll across the final finish line. But I was feeling surprisingly good, despite the fact that I now know I had that venomous bite on the back of my knee.
"It was quite painful, but I was so energized by the crowd and the fact it was the last one," Ellen continued. "I'm sure there's pictures of me somewhere, running while staring at my phone. And what you now know is that I'm watching Justin Jefferson videos. I knew that they had cameras and a live stream and everything on me, so I figured that my kids, especially Jameson, would get a kick out of it, but also be horribly embarrassed — you know, in a fun way.
"I thought, 'If I have the legs to do it, why not do it?' Ellen added.
And so she did, channeling her inner Justin Jefferson to Griddy across the finish line, thinking of her son. The way she'd thought of him in Boston, imagining then what he'd be like and what he'd love to do.
"He and I really do have an interesting sports connection from the very beginning," she said, smiling. "I don't think he's interested in running ultramarathons, and that's O.K. Because when he plays football? He lights up. And that's what it's all about."
