Running a marathon at 17 is impressive. One of Liberty’s students, Bradley Hudson (12), did just that.

Hudson ran the Kansas City Marathon on Oct. 19 at 7:03 a.m on the city streets in Kansas City.

What made Hudson interested in running in the first place and wanting to do a marathon was back in April when he was watching a bunch of inspirational, running influencer videos. One quote really stuck to him: “go one more” by Nick Bare.

Bare is a bodybuilder, runner, has his own company and has a youtube channel that is all around the quote “go one more” which Hudson now lives by.

“I watched his video like three times on the way to Kansas City because there was 30 minutes left of the drive and it was a 6-minute video so I watched it like three times to get in the mindset,” Hudson said.

What helped Hudson with his marathon was cross country. During cross country, the team would do hill training going up and down hills.

“That honestly helped a lot more than I thought it would because hills during my marathon were actually so easy,” Hudson said.

Hudson says assistant cross country coach Sheldon Webster had the biggest coaching impact on him.

“I would just ask him a bunch of questions and he would give me a ton of advice and kind of just walk me through on what I should expect during my marathon,” Hudson said.

Another coach who helped Hudson prepare him for his marathon was Coach Tobias Glavin, who invited Hudson to run cross country to help him prepare for his marathon.

“I was very impressed with Bradley’s marathon,” Glavin said. “He set a goal and worked hard to achieve it.  Running 26.2 miles is not an easy thing to do. It takes a lot of discipline and commitment to take on.”

The Kansas City Marathon has four different groups: there was a 5k, 10k, half marathon, and a marathon.

There were also different age groups. He was in the age group 16 through 19, which were 10 people in his age group. There were zero 16 year olds, Hudson was the only 17-year-old, three 18-year-olds and six 19-year-olds.

There were more than 5,000 people running the half marathon and over 2,000 people running the marathon. The day before the marathon, Friday Oct, 18, Hudson said he went to “go to the Union Station in Kansas City and got my bib number, which was 977.”

How the Kansas City marathon worked is the 10k and 5k runners waited like 15-20 minutes after the half marathon and marathon.

“So it was like a line of people that took like 8 or 9 minutes of just people just going through the starting line, which was very fascinating,” Hudson said.

Hudson ran this marathon by himself, but had both his parents and two of his family best friends there supporting him throughout his entire journey.

“My goal going into the marathon was just kind of to finish it, but also I really wanted to get under 4:10-4:15. It was just so real just being in the moment of actually running it.”

The first 10-11 miles Hudson felt very smooth and easy when running, but that quickly changed at mile 11 when he started to get uncomfortable.

Hudson encounters difficult parts of the race, which were mile 18 to 20.

“That my mindset was going into a dark place and so all I was thinking about how much I had left and I still have more than a quarter left of the race,” Hudson said.

He said going into that bad mindset just made him run a lot worse.

Then right at mile 20 he saw his parents and looked at his watch and said, “like wait, sub 4 is possible and then I crushed the next 3 miles. My average pace for the marathon until now was 9:06 a mile and those next miles were like 8:30 pace. I felt like I was flying on those 3 miles.”

On mile 23, his body was just shutting down and “so that was just tough to keep moving,” Hudson said. But what kept him going was just a quote that honestly made him start running which was the quote, “Go one more.”

“The last 3 miles all I was thinking was go one more, go one more,” Hudson said.

He ran the entire time except for when he was drinking water.

“I remember going down a hill and there was a turn onto the street that went up to the finish line. And it was uphill so you couldn’t see the finish line at the end. It was probably like 600 meters from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill where the finish line was,” Hudson said.

Hudson’s mom was at that corner and she said “it is up there, you can do this” and then Hudson realized he was really close to sub 4 hours, the time he wanted to get.

“Running the last probably 100 meters I was just thinking about training everything that I did to go into running a marathon and just finishing it,” Hudson said. “I remember just sobbing as I am crossing the finish line. It was great.”

Hudson was feeling all the emotions: happy, tired, proud, every single emotion.

More than 2,000 people signed up and only 1,292 finishers for the marathon and Hudson was one of those to finish and also the youngest one to finish.

Hudson finished the marathon at 11:06 a.m. with a time of 3 hours and 58 minutes and 2 seconds to run a marathon, which is 26.2 miles.

“The first time I saw Coach Webster after my marathon he said,  ‘great race dude,  I am so proud of you,'” Hudson said. “That means so much coming from Coach Webster.”

The marathon experience not only helped to make Hudson a better runner, but also helped made him mentally stronger.

“I think just getting into running is so nice,” Hudson said. “Not only just getting into running, but if you do get into running your mind is so strong like for any sport or kind of endurance. Just your mindset going into any kind of activity helps you go out and do your best. ‘Go one more.'”

This story was originally published on LHStoday on October 30, 2024.