This past April, Scott Kline ’88, at age 61, completed the Boston Marathon, for the second time — something that anyone could be proud of. But for Kline it was a recovery run of sorts. Last October, he reached a long-term goal of running a marathon in all 50 states.
Kline first ran the Boston Marathon as a law student in 1987, when he was 25, he wrote to the Bulletin. Some 25 years later he decided it was time to start running again. He’d retired from his job as a technology executive and practicing lawyer to spend more time with his kids. “My children were tied up in school during the day. None of my friends were retired. My wife was still working.” He needed a project. “I don’t really love running,” he wrote. “I thought marathon training would be something I could do on my own to stay out of trouble and be healthy for several hours a day.”
Kline, who lives in Texas, decided he would give the Dallas Marathon a try, and signed up for the 2013 race. It got canceled because of an ice storm. Undeterred, he flew to Las Vegas that weekend and ran the Hoover Dam Marathon instead. “I was disappointed with my performance, so I signed up for another one, and then another one, etc.” He was off to the races. “I started to bring my times down and met some really lovely and interesting people,” he wrote.
“I don’t think of myself as particularly tough or driven. … But I guess I am pretty resourceful.”
By 2018, Kline got the idea for his project: to run a marathon in every state (he had run in nine so far). By that time his wife, Michele Schwartz, had retired and begun traveling with him. Kline went into overdrive. Between September 2021 and June 2023 alone, he ran 21 marathons, his “most crowded schedule.”
Needless to say, it was not easy. In January 2023 he was running the Maui marathon (in state no. 43). He ended up fracturing a bone in his foot and hobbling the last 13 miles. But he has never not finished a race. “I don’t think of myself as particularly tough or driven,” Kline reflected, “but I have overcome a lot of bad circumstances. I guess I am pretty resourceful.” In October of last year, in Hartford, Connecticut, he ran in his 50th state.
Then in April, Kline came back to Boston to close the loop. He estimates that he and his wife have now traveled well over 100,000 miles.