Making Meaning in the Miles: Lee LeBouef’s Marathon Story
In just over 6 weeks on December 6th, Lee LeBouef will voluntarily rise before the sun, walk a mile to an arbitrarily marked line on a road in Memphis, Tennessee, and run for roughly four hours alongside some 20,000+ other people.
He will do this not because he’s a lifelong avid runner or because he just happens to be in Memphis that day, but because for the 2nd time, Lee is running the St. Jude Marathon as a “hero,”— a runner who fundraises for the organization while training for the race.
In his words, “The families, the St. Jude people, you know, they're going through much worse than a run could ever cost to me. I'm choosing this, they're not choosing it, and it could be way worse than running at 4 a.m. on a July morning when it's 85 degrees and humidity is all over the place. So it's all relative, I guess you could say.”
But Lee wasn’t always a runner. “I wouldn’t have considered myself a runner before two years ago,” he says. A resident of Harahan, Louisiana in the Greater New Orleans area, Lee has run/walked the Crescent City Classic with his family for years but mostly identified as a golfer before having kids and realizing, “it’s hard to kind of disappear for three or four hours to play golf.”
Many of us might decide to simply buy a Peleton or hit the gym a couple times a week. Lee decided to start waking up before his wife and children— ages 3 1/2 and just under a year—to train for long distance races instead.
He didn’t dive right in with marathons, though. He started in 2022 with the famed Couch to 5K program, running just a minute at a time and building up his endurance for a year before a friend mentioned running the 2023 St. Jude Marathon. A third friend ended up joining them, and he thought it would be a one-off, but after running a half-marathon later and being pleased with his time, “the bug,” as he calls it, bit him again.
“I gotta do this one more time,” he said, “at least while I'm in pretty good shape and, you know, my knees are still in relatively good shape! I figured the best way to keep me motivated and to actually kind of help other people was to try to do the St. Jude again and to do the fundraising like I did last time.
St. Jude is really such a great race, and this is a great cause. It just kind of makes the miles easier to run ‘cause you know that there's people who are out there going through some things that they're not choosing to do. So it just makes it easier to suffer through it a little bit.”
Some training FAQs:
How many days a week do you run?
four; one speed run, one race-pace run, a long run, and then a recovery run
How long is a typical marathon training program?
This cycle was 16 weeks because his base was stronger than last time. In 2023, Lee trained for 20 weeks.
How long is your longest run before race day?
Lee will aim to run 20 miles twice before race day.
Do you eat anything during long runs? If so, what?
Lee is a Clif Blok Chews kinda guy, not goos/gels
What about mid-run hydration?
Depending on the weather and route, Lee will run with handheld water bottles and/or some form of sodium-based hydration packet.
What do you do for entertainment during long runs?
music and zone out!
How can people follow you on race day?
For anyone, like Lee a couple years ago, who thinks they aren’t a runner or couldn’t do it, Lee has these words of encouragement:
“Like I said, I started from basically a couch potato! Now here I am running full marathons and enjoying it. Every day when I'm running, when the weather's nice, I give thanks and feel very fortunate to be able to do that and be out there. I think it's something that once it gets in you, you know, it's going to stick in there if you let it. I definitely encourage people to get out and run and start moving.”
If you’d like to sponsor Lee, you can do so here.
We can’t wait to keep up with Lee on race day, and we’re honored to be a small part of such a wonderful cause and effort from him and St. Jude!
