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The 50th Marine Corps Marathon is less than a month away, and WTOP is highlighting some of the inspiring people getting ready to take part in what’s known as “The People’s Marathon.”
On Monday, WTOP spoke to a nurse who’s chosen to run the 26.2-mile distance for the first time. But this Virginia man is preparing to run it for the 40th time.
“I’ve run it in rain, I’ve run it in wind, I’ve run it with Oprah,” John Cox told WTOP while sitting at the Caboose Brewing Company & Tavern in Vienna, Virginia.
Cox has pretty much seen it all during the running of the Marine Corps Marathon over the past 39 years.
He started in 1986, running it with his father who was a Marine veteran of World War II and fought in Okinawa. He was a law student at the University of Virginia at the time.
“It’s funny because that year, when I ran in ’86, my dad was as old as I am now. So he ran his first one at 62 with me,” he said.
The race is a family tradition. Cox’s father and mother would come down for the race every year and stay at a hotel in Arlington. Since that first year, Cox has run with his father, brother, sister and his two daughters. One of his daughters qualified for the Boston Marathon when she was a teenager.
“But overall, I think our family has well over 115 (entries), maybe even higher,” he said. “It’s tradition for me. It’s feels like it’s more like a cleansing experience. When you finish it, you feel like you’ve accomplished something.”
He has seen the race grow from a few thousand runners to now over 40,000. He has also seen the course and preparations for the race change.
“When they had the D.C. sniper, that was scary only because the sniper had been shooting in Maryland and been shooting in D.C. and been shooting in Virginia, and you just didn’t know,” he said. “They definitely amped up security.”
He also ran just a few weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon, describing the massive hole he and other runners saw as they passed by.
Over his 39 races, the conditions have varied dramatically. He’s run in snow, heat, humidity, hurricane-force winds and even gruesome injuries.
“I stepped on a nail and it went into my foot. And I’m sitting there, and I’m like, ‘Oh, this hurts. This hurts a lot,’ but I couldn’t bend down to do anything, so I had to ask a spectator, ‘Hey, can you please take this nail out of my foot?’” Cox said with a laugh.
One of the worst races he participated in on the streets of D.C. was in 2023, when the heat reached the upper 70s and the humidity was extreme.
“The clothes were sticking to me, and then you just started hearing sirens, and people were collapsing. They were running out of water, and they started closing the course because they didn’t have enough medical personnel,” Cox said. “It was the right choice.”
Though each one represents a “cleansing experience” for him, there are just too many medals to hang. Instead, he keeps his 39 medals in a shoe box. He said his favorite thing to do while he’s running the course is to spot a familiar face.
“I always try to see one person that I recognize from just life in general,” Cox said. “That makes my marathon experience.”
His advice to newer runners is to not “go crazy on the first hill, you’ve got 24 miles after that.”
“That first hill can break you. And if you’re at all concerned about it, I would conserve your energy there, knowing that you have a long downhill and then just let the crowd take you,” Cox said.
While his streak may one day break, it won’t be this year. He said he never takes the opportunity to run the race for granted.
“It’s well supported, and it’s a privilege to run with the Marines,” he said.
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