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For one LaGrange resident, running around the world is not only a hobby. It’s a life goal.

Kasha Jones started her running journey just 15 years ago. The then 26-year-old decided to run a mile but couldn’t do it. So the next night, she tried again and repeated the process until she could. Now, she has progressed to running much longer distances and recently completed a goal of running a half-marathon in every state.

That fateful day started not only a love of running but eventually a years-long streak of running at least a mile every day. 

“I run at least one non-stop mile every single day. This past week, I hit eight years. That means COVID, hurricane, illness, moving across the country, you name it, I have run a mile every single day,” Jones said.

Since she began running, Kasha has run both competitively and on her own at countless distances and all around the world.

In 2009, ran her first half marathon in the inaugural AthHalf in Athens and later her first full marathon in the Savannah Rock & Roll Marathon.

“I have done every distance, from the mile through the ultra marathon. The half marathon is one of my favorites. So slowly, as I traveled and moved, I would run races in different states. I realized there are 50 states. That’s a finite number. I could conceivably do one in every state,” Jones said.

Jones began running in organized half-marathons, but she realized that often, when she is in another state, they don’t have a half-marathon to run in.

“So I started doing them on my own. I would just go out and run the half-marathon distance in the state that I was in,” she said.

I flew to Hawaii. I ran there. I flew to Alaska. I ran there,” she said, saying she added a lot while moving cross country.

“I picked up the car in Nevada and ran a total of 13 halves crossing the country,” Jones said.

Jones said she added a few of the half-marathons in big chunks as she traveled, sometimes running two a day.

“This past week, I had six left. So my husband, Adam [], and I went to New England, and I knocked out the last six,” she said. “I did one a day. My fastest half was [2 hours 7 minutes], and my slowest half was [3 hours 30 minutes]. When you’re doing multiple days in a row, you don’t go fast. You go fast enough that you can do it the next day.”

From running alongside horses in Kentucky to carrying bear spray in Alaska to deal with moose, Kasha had some remarkable milestones and memorable moments on her running journey.

Kasha recently completed her 10,000th mile on the way to her lifetime goal of 24,901 miles, the circumference of Earth. She literally wants to run around the world.

Now that she has conquered all 50 states, she’s looking for more.

“I have also run in six countries and on one ocean,” Jones said, explaining she ran the equivalent of a half-marathon running laps on the deck of a cruise ship in the Pacific.

“I’m still running,” she said. “I will continue to do continents, and I will continue to do oceans because that is finite. It is something that can be accomplished. We’re not done. The states are done, but we’re not done.”