Join me on Route 66!
I will set forth from Buckingham Fountain in Chicago on the morning of August 4, 2026, exactly 100 days before the centennial of Route 66's signing
on November 11. On the anniversary, I will arrive at the Santa Monica Pier and the end of the trail. This roughly averages out to a marathon (26 miles) per day,
but the exact daily distance will vary based on lodging and resupply opportunities, weather, and how much my feet hurt. Like many transcontinental runners,
I'll run self-supported and use a jogging stroller to mule food and water. I will also have a live tracker
updating my location to this site while I'm on the move - so please feel free to join by foot, by bike, or by car to share some of the journey.
You can contact me
here or reach out via
Instagram.
I hope to see you on the Mother Road!
Live tracking coming soon.
The Route
Untangling a modern trace of Route 66 is not straightforward - no single continuous highway ever existed, and the official signage
changed many times between 1926 and 1985. In many places old Route 66 has been paved over by interstate (especially I-40), purchased by private
landownders, fenced off to make military bases, or eroded by nature. My journey aims to follow original routing as closely as possible
while staying on legal roads and adjusting for safe traffic conditions (for many remote sections, this means running on frontage roads rather than interstate highways).
There is a well-established cycling route for Route 66 through Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, and California, which I plan to follow for much of the journey.
By virtue of traveling on foot, I am also able to explore some rougher historic roads that the cycling route avoids.
You can find my full route in this
Komoot collection.
Please note that I may update the route between now and the start of the journey.
America by Foot
If my previous ultra-distance projects have taught me anything, it's that running is the most intimate way to travel a landscape. I am drawn to the intensity and vulnerability that go hand-in-hand with self-supported long-distance running; when the effort of movement strips you raw, every pebble underfoot registers vividly in your brain, and every human interaction becomes a core memory. It's not a runner's high - rather, it's the purity of experience that comes from leaving part of yourself out on the trail.
Remembering the Bunion Derby
For the curious ultramarathoner, there is a historic reason to run the length of Route 66: the Bunion Derby. In 1928, less than two years after the route was signed into being, 199 men from all over the world lined up in Los Angeles to race across the United States for a $25,000 cash prize - nearly half a million in 2026 dollars. The derby traced the original Route 66 (the official highway was redrawn many times between 1930 and 1980) until Chicago, at which point the runners and their traveling circus beelined toward New York. Many of the racers were not professional athletes, let alone runners, yet nevertheless managed to average between 30 and 50 miles per day, every day, sometimes in apocalyptic conditions. Most modern ultramarathon runners, myself included, tend to think of the 1963 JFK 50 or the 1977 Western States 100 as the genesis of our sport, but in truth its roots are much older and more diverse than this. The Route 66 Centennial Run is an opportunity to retrace the steps of Bunion Derby racers and honor their journey across prohibition-era America.
A Cultural Snapshot - The Route 66 Centennial Run
At its core, the Route 66 Centennial Run is about slowing down. From pre-Colonial footpaths to the wagon tracks of the Oregon Trail, people have been traversing America for millennia. In 1926, the unpaved dirt roads of newborn Route 66 signaled a seismic change in human travel, and the birth of a uniquely American obsession with the automobile. In the heyday of the cultural Main Street of America, as Route 66 has been lovingly dubbed, the car was a physical embodiment of Manifest Destiny, a symbol of postwar excess, and a metaphor for freedom itself - capitalism at its finest. No single narrative better explains modern-day America than the history of Route 66. And yet, in three generations, this tarmac artery has all but dried up. By the time Route 66 was decomissioned in 1985, interstates had already paved over many single-lane highways. Today ghost towns line the old road, visited only by bikepackers and misty-eyed motorists, and a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles takes fewer than five hours. Running approximates the speed of travel at the inception of the Mother Road, in a quest to fully experience this fading yet transformative heart of America.
