Amputee Runner Jacky Hunt-Broersma Running 100 Marathons In 100 Days
BOSTON (CBS) - What Jacky Hunt-Broersma is up to these days just sounds crazy.
Jacky, who runs with a prosthetic, is running 100 marathons in 100 days!
Every day she flashes a scorecard of how many down and how many to go. Like Bill Belichick says, "no days off."
So why is she doing this?
"Yes, I get that a lot and my kids, normally when they hear my next thing I want to do, they roll their eyes at me and they're like 'Here we go again," she told WBZ-TV.
Jacky runs some of her daily marathons on the road and some on the treadmill!
Sounds miserable, right?
She was a training for a 100-mile race, and because of the pandemic, she decided to stay inside and do that 100 miles on a treadmill.
"Then I researched it, and an amputee's never run a hundred miles on a treadmill, so I thought let's see what happens," she told WBZ. "It was definitely one of the hardest things I've done."
How long did it take? "Just under 24 hours," she said.
A record breaker and a fighter. The story of how she lost her leg is frightening.
"I woke up one morning, literally, I woke up and on the bottom part of my leg, I suddenly had this huge big lump that had just popped out, and it was the size of a golf ball. I was like, 'Oh my goodness, what is this?," she recalled.
It was a rare cancer. Less than a month after the diagnosis, her leg was amputated.
That was 2001. It wasn't until 15 years later, she decided to become a runner.
"I was told you can't run because you're an amputee, don't even bother because you need prosthetics and it's complicated and things like that. And when someone tells you that, because you suddenly can't do it, you want to do it. That's how my journey started," she said.
She was hooked. Her 100 marathon challenge is raising money to help other amputees enjoy running and to afford prosthetics like hers.
So what does it feel like to be such an inspiration to so many people?
"It's an incredible feeling to be able to actually do that and to put yourself out there and having people just achieve things because of what you're doing. It's just an amazing feeling."
Jacky lives in Arizona. We'll get to see her next month when she runs marathon number 92, at the Boston Marathon.
You can watch live coverage of the 126th Boston Marathon on WBZ-TV and CBS Boston.com on Monday April 18, 2022.
