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SOUTH JORDAN — Madison Irwin will cross the finish line of her 30th marathon Saturday, not long before she celebrates her 30th birthday.
Irwin has been running since she graduated from high school. She went from running one or two marathons a year to about four a year before taking a hiatus from running consistently after she got married. She hit the pavement again regularly after giving birth to her first child, and a couple of years ago, she set a goal of completing her 30th marathon by the time she turned 30.
She said she wanted to run her final marathon as close to her 30th birthday as she could. Her birthday is on Monday, and she will be running the East Canyon Marathon in Morgan Saturday.
“My birthday was on Saturday last year, but it would’ve been awesome to have it on my birthday this year, but it didn’t work out that way,” she said.
The dedicated runner ran marathons at 28 and 32 weeks pregnant. When her third child was 2 months old, Irwin’s mom brought her baby to her during a marathon so she could breastfeed her under a nursing cover as she walked that part of the race, she said. Right after she graduated from college in 2009, she ran the Boston Marathon.
“And I actually qualified right before I had my third baby, but because of the registration, they only have so many spots you can get in so they actually take the fastest of the people that qualified to reach their cap, and I was 10 seconds too slow to run this year,” she said.
Irwin is “super proud” to be completing this goal, and she’s not stopping at 30 marathons. In October, she will be running the St. George Marathon, she said.
