A woman signed her husband up for a marathon with 24 hours notice after he bragged he could complete 26.2 miles without any training.
Maisie Todd, 31, put her husband Logan’s name down for the Rock ‘n’ Roll marathon in San Diego on May 31 after he “kept bringing up” how he could finish the course with no training.
Surprising him 24 hours before the big day on June 1, 2025, Logan, 32, prepped by eating peanut butter sandwiches, stretching and drinking lots of water.
He went on to finish in an impressive time of five hours 58 minutes – running the first 10 miles without a break – with supportive Maisie posting regular updates of the whole experience on social media.
Logan, a software engineer, from San Diego, California, US, said: “Being woken up at 6am on a Saturday [with the surprise] didn’t feel good.
“It was also exciting because I talk a big game, and it was time to put my money where my mouth was.
“Running is definitely not a passion.
“I did sports in high school but ever since I graduated, I haven’t been very active.
“I started running and jogging and did that for about 10 miles and felt surprisingly good about it the whole time.
“I ran into a bunch of people that had seen me on TikTok the day before, and they cheered me on.
“I knew I was going to finish so it just became a mind game of how I was going to get there.”
Maisie planned the surprise in April after talking with friends about signing Logan up for one out of the blue.
Using her sister Sadie Todd’s, 27, computer, she applied on Logan’s behalf.
“One of his stipulations was he had to be given 24 hours’ notice and then he could complete it,” she said.
“I kind of kept it a secret between my sister and I.”
Waking Logan at 6am the day before, Maisie broke the news, and the marathon preparation began.
Logan said: “I knew that I had to carb load and so I went out and got a bunch of stuff we don’t usually have in like peanut butter and bread.
“I just ate as much as I thought I could.
“My sister-in-law has run a marathon, and she set me with a nice backpack I could wear to carry my energy gels, and then we went out and got a pair of shoes that looked like they’d do the job for me.
“That was it really, I just did a few stretches and drank lots of water.
“I got about two hours of sleep [the night before].
“I was lying there tossing and turning thinking about the situation I’d got myself into.”
Logan set off at 6.45 a.m., with Maisie cheering him on.
She said: “I saw he looked nervous and almost felt bad for signing him up.
“He said ‘don’t feel bad I did this to myself’.”
Smashing his goal of seven hours, Logan was relieved to finish the route.
He said: “I felt a little bad about it because everyone else had trained for months and I was like ‘please don’t be mad at me’.
“The goal was to get within seven and then I realised, I did the math about halfway through and realised I could break six if I wanted to.
“I didn’t have too much emotion [at the finish line].
“My knees hurt and I was focused on walking.
“It was always a fun hypothetical question to ask people and now it’s been answered.
“You can finish a marathon with 24 hours’ notice.
“The day after was not good, everything hurt.
“Stairs were a problem.
“I still just kept drinking plenty of fluids and stretching as much as I could.”
Maisie has found people online “didn’t believe it” when she shared videos of the day online.
She said: “A lot of the comments have been supportive however I kind of wish I had brought it up before because it came out of nowhere and a lot of people didn’t believe it was true.
“People were commenting saying ‘he looks like he’s in shape’ and ‘he’s done a marathon before’.
“I wish more people believed it.
“Other than that, it’s been really positive, and a lot of people were following along.”
Despite his amazing achievement, Logan has no plans to run any more marathons.
He said: “I didn’t even want to run that one.
“I think my running career started and ended on Sunday.”
