Published May 27, 2026 03:31AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Greg Nance was jogging down a road in eastern Iowa when he met Carol the beekeeper, who was selling honey at a roadside stand. At least that\u2019s how Nance, 37, remembers the start of their conversation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the week after Charlie Kirk had been shot so she talked about that and how heartbroken she was,\u201d Nance says. \u201cShe wished young people had more opportunities to connect to society. \u2018Life is sweeter when we contribute,\u2019 she kept repeating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nance shared his memory of this conversation as only a professional politician could\u2014with a healthy dose of optimism and a lesson about America tacked on at the end. Nance is a member of Washington\u2019s state legislature, and he represents communities in Kitsap County, just west of Seattle. He\u2019s a Democrat, and proudly proclaims his family\u2019s commitment to public service (\u201cthe son of a social worker and a public defender\u201d) on his website.<\/a><\/p>\n While he did not know Carol\u2019s political affiliation, he says they found ways to connect over their shared values, rather than dwelling on the many reasons not to see eye-to-eye.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople like Carol care deeply about the future of our country,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing how much we have in common, even [as] people who vote differently and watch different TV networks.\u201d<\/p>\n The encounter was just one of several dozen memories Nance has from his epic 2025 cross-country journey on foot. Between August 20 and October 30, Nance ran the length of the Mississippi River, from its headwaters at Lake Itasca in Northern Minnesota down to the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana. The more than 2,000-mile journey took him 72 days to complete. Along the way, Nance endured injuries and close-calls with cars, passed through dozens of postcard-size towns along the river, and raised money for his personal nonprofit, the Run Far Foundation<\/a>, which focuses on improving youth mental health.<\/p>\n While taking on a cross-country run may seem odd for a lawmaker, Nance isn\u2019t your average politician. Long before he was elected to office, Nance had a passion for taking on eye-popping physical challenges. After getting bitten by the ultramarathon bug in grad school, Nance completed a self-supported 155-mile run across the Gobi Desert in 2014. In 2019 he completed the World Marathon Challenge, running seven marathons in seven days on seven different continents. In 2022, he ran 3,156 miles from New York City to the Pacific Coast. He wasn\u2019t done\u2014later that year, he ran 85 miles from the shore of Puget Sound to the summit of Mount Rainier.<\/p>\n While shorter than the east-to-west run, tracing the Mississippi River came with its own challenges\u2014namely, the lack of an established running route.<\/p>\n \u201cI searched online for trip reports and local news stories and never found anything,\u201d he says. \u201cThere was nothing. Nobody blogged about doing it. If someone did it, it was top secret and without verification.\u201d<\/p>\n Old Man River, which touches ten states, holds a special place of importance for Nance. While he grew up in the district he represents, Nance spent summers at his grandparents\u2019 house in Natchez, Mississippi, and he watched barges and paddlewheelers float toward the Gulf of Mexico. In 2024 he began plotting a running route from Minnesota to Louisiana along the Great River Road, the national scenic byway that follows the river on its bank.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, Nance didn\u2019t take into account an important element of the road\u2014the actual pavement is heavily sloped for flood control. For the first eight days he felt great, ticking off 40 miles or so each day. But he had trained on flat trails and paths prior to the massive run, and after more than a week of footfalls on the uneven ground, Nance felt a twang in his joints as he approached Minneapolis.<\/p>\n \u201cMy ankles started to degrade and I got a super painful case of tendinitis. My foot looked like a balloon,\u201d he says. \u201cIf your ankle isn\u2019t working, there\u2019s no propulsion down there. It brought me to my knees.\u201d<\/p>\n After 200 miles, Nance\u2019s pace became a crawl, down to just one or two miles a day. He\u2019d walk for several hours, only to stop to ice his painful joint and watch television. He thought about quitting altogether.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt embarrassed,\u201d he says. \u201cI had promised friends and sponsors that I\u2019d do it, and I had barely made it to Minneapolis.\u201d<\/p>\n But the easier days and hours spent recovering helped him heal, and after a few days, two miles a day became seven, and then more. A week after he nearly had to stop, Nance was approaching 20 miles a day. He kept this pace for the rest of the journey.<\/p>\n He passed roadkill, live snakes, and barking dogs. There were times when Nance had to jump off the roadway to avoid being hit by drivers. Crossing from Illinois into Kentucky, he had to navigate a bridge with no shoulder and traffic screaming by. And as the miles ticked by, and the states passed under his feet, Nance turned his attention from pacing and speed to the towns and people he met along the way.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d see some landscaper or construction worker and tell them, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m running the length of the Mississippi for youth mental health,\u2019 and people would tell me about their own mental health challenges,\u201d Nance says. \u201cThey\u2019re under deadlines and pressure at work. They\u2019ve lost friends to violence or fentanyl.\u201d<\/p>\n These interactions have blended into a series of memories, Nance says, alongside other high points from the run. In Arkansas he stopped at a memorial to a Japanese internment camp from World War II. In Mississippi he stopped at his grandmother\u2019s house. Near the end of the journey, Nance learned that his wife was pregnant, with a girl.<\/p>\n