A little more than a year ago, Jake McCluskey weighed 370 pounds and couldn’t run one city block. When he began running, the assistant brewer for Santa Clara Valley Brewing in San Jose trained in the middle of the night because he was embarrassed by his lack of fitness.



Fourteen months later, McCluskey has shed nearly 160 pounds and plans to run 50 miles from San Francisco to San Jose—beginning late Saturday night—to ring in his 42nd birthday and celebrate his rejuvenated life.

McCluskey’s run is also happening during Father’s Day, a significant time for him because he grew up without a father. He told Runner’s World Newswire that the day is an annual reminder of that, but “in this last year, I’ve come too far to feel bad at all.”



Instead, he’s celebrating his health and raising money for the Silicon Valley Children’s Fund, an organization that helps send children in foster care to college.

“I wasn’t a foster kid, I had a very loving mother, but I felt that we would share a similar experience on [Father’s Day],” McCluskey said.

Though 50 miles might seem like an ambitious goal for someone who just began a Couch-to-5K program a little over a year ago, McCluskey’s training indicates that he’s ready to pull it off. He said he has run 42 miles at once in training, and one long weekend, he ran back-to-back-to-back marathons—26.2 miles three days in a row.

He ran his first half marathon in 2:47:22 in September of 2014 at the San Jose Rock ’n’ Roll Half Marathon. He followed that up by running a faster pace at the Oakland Marathon—his first—this past March, which he completed in 5:19:22. Shortly after he crossed the finish line of his marathon, he hatched the plan for his 50-miler, something he wouldn’t have been able to imagine back when he was training in the middle of the night.

“I would only run at like 2 a.m. or 3 a.m.,” McCluskey said. “But even at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., I would have a cool support system of random people—people coming home from clubs, people that were out delivering stuff.



“I was so embarrassed, but no matter what time of day it was, I’d get a lot of support. It was awesome.”

McCluskey remembers a turning point that came about six weeks into his beginners training program. His schedule called for him to run for 20 minutes without stopping or walking. He pulled it off, which was a tremendous confidence boost.

“[Running] physically hurts, but I’ve always liked going out to do it,” he said. “Once I lost about 100 pounds, I felt better in my knees.”

He attributes the weight loss to a combination of exercise and a smarter diet. While he didn’t follow any specific plan, he tried to reduce the number of carbohydrates he ate. However, he had to draw the line at beer. As a brewer, he drinks beer every day.

McCluskey will begin his run at 11 p.m. on Saturday at San Francisco’s Cellarmaker Brewing Company and finish it at San Jose’s Good Karma Artisan Ales & Café, two of his favorite spots. Friends will send him off, cheer him on throughout his run, and celebrate with him at the finish. (He hopes to complete the run in about 10 hours.)

McCluskey said he thinks he will run an organized ultra in the future, but right now he’s just focusing on getting through this weekend’s challenge. One thing he’s sure of is that he will keep running.

“The biggest benefit of running, to me, has just been that time out to myself,” McCluskey said. “I’ve really gotten to know myself in this short time that I’ve been running, and I’ve learned more about myself in this past year than I did in the first 40 years of my life.”

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