It started as a bit of trash talk. Logan Todd, 32, kept telling his wife he could run a full marathon with zero training—just give him 24 hours’ notice. So Maisie Todd, 31, decided to test the theory. She secretly signed him up for the Rock ’n’ Roll San Diego Marathon and woke him up at 6 a.m. the day before the race to let him know.
“Being woken up at 6 am on a Saturday didn’t feel good,” Logan admitted, but the challenge was on. With peanut butter sandwiches, a borrowed hydration pack, and barely two hours of sleep, the 32-year-old software engineer lined up at the starting gate the next morning—and somehow finished in under six hours.
He ran the first 10 miles straight, which makes my knees hurt just thinking about it. Strangers recognized him from Maisie’s Instagram stories, where she documented the entire thing—panic, prep, pain, and all. “I knew I was going to finish, so it just became a mind game of how I was going to get there,” Logan said. He hadn’t trained, hadn’t run regularly in years, and described running as “definitely not a passion.”
Maisie had been scheming since April. “One of his stipulations was he had to be given 24 hours’ notice,” she said. “I kind of kept it a secret between my sister and I.” Logan carb-loaded the night before, snagged new shoes that “looked like they’d do the job,” and somehow willed his way through 26.2 miles—finishing with a time of 5:58.
Man Ran a Marathon With No Training and 24 Hours’ Notice
For first-time or non-competitive runners, especially without training, anything under 6 hours is generally considered respectable—so Logan’s 5:58 is slower than average but still impressive, given the zero prep.
Online, people doubted it. “He looks like he’s in shape,” some commented. Others didn’t believe the timeline. “I wish more people believed it,” Maisie said. “But a lot of people were following along and cheering him on virtually.”
Logan, for his part, has zero plans to do this again. “I didn’t even want to run that one,” he said. “My knees hurt. Everything hurt. Stairs were a problem. The day after was rough.”
Still, for one wildly public, slightly deranged weekend, he followed through on a claim most people wouldn’t dare whisper—let alone act on with an audience.
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