For Jason, running his first full marathon was about more than crossing a finish line; it was a capstone to a long journey of finding and honoring family.
After a long time of searching for answers about his biological roots and building connections with his biological family, Jason has revived his athletic past in honor of his biological mother in Duluth, Minnesota, at Grandma’s Marathon.
Returning to Running
For Jason, running is nothing new. In high school, he ran track, and throughout college, he played D2 football. “I would say, having played college football, you’ve got good conditioning standards overall, but running is something I got into more.”
Running track in high school was more about how fast he could run to get it over with rather than how long he could endure it.
“I used to do adventure racing after I was out of college, where you would mountain bike, run, and do orienteering, which is where you are given a map and have to go to certain points as quickly as you can. That’s how I got more into endurance running.”
Now, Jason has taken on his first full marathon. On June 20, Jason participated in the Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, to honor his biological mother who sadly passed from pancreatic cancer.
Uncovering His Family Tree
Jason was adopted as a baby and had always wondered about his biological family. “From the time that your parents tell you that you’re adopted, all kinds of questions start swirling. There are things that are genetically or otherwise unexplainable.” Jason’s adoption process was complicated, and there wasn’t a lot of information to go off of when he started his search.
“My family that adopted me came from a farmers’ and tradesmen’s background, while my father was a pilot and my mother was a legal secretary. I was the first one to go to school for engineering. I was the first one to play sports in high school and college. Those are the things that I enjoyed, and I did well, but my family wasn’t really into it as much as I was.”
When he was eighteen years old, Jason started the search for his biological family by signing up for a website that connected adopted children with their families. Unfortunately, this first round of searching was unsuccessful for Jason, but it didn’t stop his desire to find his family.
At twenty years old, Jason started worrying about his genetic health risks. Jason describes how, at the time, DNA testing was more about detecting the risk and how to take care of it, and not how severe the risk was.
“When we had my daughter in 2013, the urgency started to increase because I would like her to know something about where genetically we came from and what may be ahead.”
This urgency led to Jason signing up for Ancestry.com, really starting his journey. Jason found that Ancestry.com matches you with people who share enough DNA, and it showed him other people who would be a second or third cousin.
For the first time, Jason had found people who could be in his family tree. He spent a couple of months going through family trees and historical documents from people he shared DNA with, trying to find more people who might be from his immediate biological family.
Jason knew where he was born, so from the information he found on Ancestry.com, he was able to search the area for people who matched him. From there, he found a group of people who immigrated from Poland to Duluth, Minnesota, and started digging into that, where he found other key details.
“I had found someone who was potentially where I was born during the time frame I would have been born. From there, I started researching her family tree links and who she was and where she came from, and she shared all the same ancestry as the second and third cousins I had found.”
Jason decided to reach out to a couple of the distant cousins he found and asked if they knew the woman. They were able to help Jason put together the puzzle pieces of who this person was to him. Through this process, he discovered some articles reporting that the woman, if it was his mom, had sadly passed away just nine months prior from pancreatic cancer.
“Well, if this is my mom, that opportunity has passed,” Jason told us. He was still determined to find more. “If she’s not there, someone else probably is.”
Connecting With His Newfound Family
The pieces started to come together for Jason. His adopted mom had encouraged him to reach out to a friend of the woman. She was able to connect him directly to the family. In parallel, her family started to find Jason on social media and did their own research on him. Both found very distinct physical resemblances to many from within the family.
Both sides were now very curious and wanted to confirm if they fit together. One of the woman’s daughters took a maternal DNA test with Jason, and within a couple of weeks, Jason got an email he had been waiting for since he was a child. “It’s a boy!” He sent the results to her husband, who confirmed that the woman was his biological mother.
In the response to his email, the husband responded with “Wow!!! If you’re from her, we would love to meet you. Are you ever around here?” As it turned out, Jason was just a couple of hours south on a work trip and flying out the next day. The two agreed to meet for dinner that night, with the husband bringing three of the adult children, Jason’s half-siblings.
Meeting his biological family for the first time was an indescribable moment for both of them. “I met three of my siblings at that time, and everyone was just totally in shock with this whole thing, but it was awesome.”
Most families would probably not have been as open to building relationships or getting to know each other in a situation like this. This family, however, had started warming up to the situation and had reached out to him – aunts, uncles, cousins had all connected by text or social media.
Jason recalls, “I was blown away. When you start down a path like this, you never know how it’s going to end up. I just could not believe how warm this family was and how strong and open they were as people – just amazing people.”
“They invited me to family Christmases, St. Pat’s, and a wedding! This is so much more than I ever thought this could become. These connections have given me such a great sense of closure but a tremendous sense of pride.”
This was Jason’s why for running.
Running With Support For A Purpose
In the process of finding his family, Jason found out that two of his sisters had run with Project Purple in 2017.
Three or four years later, they were running again, this time for Horner’s Hustle and invited Jason to join them. This was his first step into running with a purpose.
There was a period where Jason didn’t know if it was his place to be involved: “I didn’t want to impose because this was their mother and their cause. They had lived a lifetime with her and carried the pain of losing her.
My loss was different— it was hard to know that I’d never had the chance to get to know her, but I hadn’t shared the life and memories they had.” So when Jason got the invitation to run with his family in Project Purple’s Horners Hustle 5k, he was in!
“I was overwhelmed with the amount of support and everything else, and I was like, if I can do this, I would like to do a marathon because I’ve never done one and I’m pretty sure I’m only ever going to do one. It was for them and raising funds and awareness around this great cause!”
His biological mother was known as the cornerstone of her community. She was deeply loved and worked tirelessly to put her children through college. Jason was proud to know this was the woman he came from, and he strives to honor her legacy by living a life that reflects the values she embodied.
The Training Battle
Ever since Jason decided he wanted to run a marathon a couple of years ago, he spent months getting into shape. “As it turns out, jumping off the couch and starting to train for a marathon doesn’t work well, especially when you’re in your 40s.”
Jason trained for this marathon extensively, running in the Denver Colfax Half Marathon. Jason signed up for that marathon to run 20 miles just to see how his body would feel and what else he’d need to do to prepare for the Grandma’s Marathon.
While trying to get into shape, Jason kept suffering from a recurring injury. At first, he just assumed it was because of all of the hills he was running on, but after going to the doctors, he discovered he had three herniated discs in his lower back that were pushing against the nerves that run down to the back of his legs.
Jason then worked with CU Sports Medicine for about a year and a half to understand which discs were herniated and what his treatment plan was going to look like.
“They worked with me on my running form and my steps per minute, which is a detail most people don’t ever think about, but I stick to those rules and stretch before I run, and I’ve actually been able to avoid getting injured since then.”
Jason had a double hernia surgery for his abdomen in December, and until January, he was unable to walk or pick things up. Through recovery, Jason was able to find a way to still work, travel, keep his fitness, and not overdo his running training so he could keep his lower back still in check.
“It’s been good because if I were left to my own devices, I would literally tear myself apart trying to go faster. So it’s just about pace and holding it and keeping the goal in mind.”
Jason officially crossed the finish line in Duluth, Minnesota, at Grandma’s Marathon on June 20 to honor his biological mother.
A Time to Process
For Jason, running has been a time to process all of the changes that have happened. “It’s been a good time, and I would say there’s not a single run that I do where this doesn’t come across my mind, and why I’m doing it, and my biological mom and everything else.”
Running a marathon required so much preparation, but Jason had so much support in what he is doing and why. His wife and daughter went with him to Minnesota to watch him cross the finish line.
“They’ve obviously been first-hand seeing me walk out the door and come back a complete mess for several months now,” Jason told us how he, his wife and his daughter have become really close over the last handful of years, especially with his daughter seeing everything that is going on.
Jason describes himself as a determined person, and quitting is something he doesn’t like to do. “My biological mom is one of the reasons I keep pushing. Whenever things get hard, I remind myself that whatever I’m facing is insignificant compared to what she endured to bring me into this world. It gives me the strength to keep moving forward.”
If you’d like to run or participate in an event of your own for Project Purple, visit our events page.
