My name is Josh Keyes. I am 41 years old, married with 2 boys (8,11). My running career began in high school at Westland John Glenn. My freshman year, I played soccer, while my brother ran cross country. I wasn’t very good at soccer and figured if I was going to do all this running, I might as well try to win a medal doing it! Throughout high school I was a 3 year letter winner in cross country and 4 year letter winner in track, competing in the 110m hurdles and 300m hurdles. After graduation, I went on to run at Eastern Michigan University, competing in 400m hurdles. I had given up on cross country as I thought it was too far in college, haha. My dream was to always become a nurse, so when nursing school began, I lost touch with my running. We would run the random Detroit Turkey Trot each year but never really took the training seriously, just family fun. One day I two years ago, I had the crazy thought of wanting to complete a marathon by age 40. COVID put a damper on that but last year I was able to complete my first marathon at 41 yrs old. The whole race experience was amazing, the Expo, the race, the party afterwards, it was indescribable. I had trained hard all summer using a training method for the first time in decades. My goal was to finish is 4 hours but fell just short at 4 hours and 17 mins. On the car ride home from the race, I had already decided I was going to do this race again! Then when we got home, I decided I would do another marathon (Glass City) before to get even more training in before this year’s Detroit Freep. I am hoping for big things this year and cant wait to share the journey with everyone.
Joshua Keyes
