ELY - When it came to marathons, Ely’s Tom Kobierski had pretty much already done it all.

A marathon in every state? Check.

The runner’s grail of Boston? Check, and check again.

Completing 100? Quite some time ago.

So after having to undergo four surgeries in a five-month span to repair his well-worn knees, and hearing his doctor say it was probably time to stop running for good, it would have been understandable if he hung up his marathon shoes.

Instead, he found another way.

Kobierski may have been the last male across the finish line at Saturday’s inaugural Ely Marathon, but he was second to none in terms of grit and determination, power-walking his way to his 135th, and likely final, marathon finish.

“I went to Boston twice and then I was trying to run fast,” Kobierski said.”“That was the ultimate goal. After I did the second Boston I was looking for something else to do so I just dabbled around. I did an Ironman, skied a Birkie (Birkebeiner), just looking for something to keep me going.” 

“Then I wondered if I could do 50 marathons by my 50th birthday. Then I wondered if I could do 100 by the time I retired from teaching,” he continued.

Kobierski reached those milestones relatively easily. Not wanting to quit running, he continued seeking out new challenges. 

“I heard about a club that ran 50 states,” Kobierski said. “I thought, ‘Yeah, OK that’s pretty cool. I think I’ll run a marathon in all 50 states.’”

Most of his marathons had been near where he was living in Chicago, so he had plenty of ground to cover. Fortunately, he was in great position to do so.

“I lived in Chicago, so I could fly out on Friday, do a race Saturday morning and get home Saturday night.”

His goal had the added bonus of allowing him to explore the United States in a way he otherwise probably would not have.

“If you want to do something that is really exhilarating and see parts of the country that you’ll probably never see, you should do it,” he said. “That’s what really was the exciting thing. I’ve got the calendar and I saw on this weekend there’s a marathon in Wyoming and the next weekend there’s a marathon in Montana, so where can I go? There’s a national park in the middle. So we literally camped our way from one marathon to another. It was absolutely really, really cool. It just happened.”

Kobierski’s marathon journey started in DeKalb, Ill. in 1980. Coming into Ely, it had been four years since his previous race.

“After that last one I had the knee surgery and knee replaced and the doc said you better not run anymore,” Kobierski said. 

However, he did say walking a race was all right.

“So I said, ‘Well, I’m going to walk a marathon.’ And then I had problems with infection. Four surgeries later and five months later, I got my knee back together.”

Kobierski didn’t just want to walk 26.2 miles, though. He wanted to walk it in the race-prescribed cutoff of 15-minute miles.

That required marking off and monitoring training walks very closely throughout the summer. It also necessitated simply more time than running at a faster pace does.

“Let me tell you this, I know now walking a marathon is harder than running a marathon,” Kobierski said. “It takes a lot more time and effort and commitment. It takes a bigger chunk out of your day to do the training. It was a pretty darn hard thing to do.”

Kobierski was quick to credit the support of the crowd for keeping him moving along Saturday, with a friend biking ahead to let spectators know his name and that he was coming.

“I really think I wouldn’t have made it if it wasn’t for my friends and (wife) BJ, as well as the community,” he said. “When I hit a water station, they knew. All of a sudden everyone knew my first name. You forget about how much you’re hurting, puff your chest up and on you go.”

Being able to hit his time came down to the wire, still up in the air as Kobierski entered Whiteside Park. It wasn’t until he was within sight of the finish line he knew he was going to make it, crossing in 6:32:48, a 14:59 pace and just 12 seconds under his goal.

“I worked for it real hard, but I wasn’t sure I was able to do that,” he said. “When I looked up at the clock, I just really felt like that was a tremendous accomplishment.”

“If those people weren’t out there, those 12 seconds would have been gone,” he added. “They were cheering me like I was in first place instead of last place. How can you not think that would have an effect?”

Kobierski will never say never to potentially lacing up for another marathon someday, but has no intention of doing so. 

He has done what he aimed to do.

“I went out on my terms and I did what I wanted to do,” he said. “It feels good.”