{"id":703436,"date":"2026-05-30T02:45:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T02:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/703436\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T02:45:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T02:45:13","slug":"the-australian-woman-who-overcame-a-horror-diagnosis-to-run-551-marathons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/703436\/","title":{"rendered":"The Australian woman who overcame a horror diagnosis to run 551 marathons"},"content":{"rendered":"

The woman who was told she would never play sport and never have children ran across the finish line of the Sydney marathon with her three kids cheering her on.<\/p>\n

It was 2001 and Kaz Thorburn had just completed her fourth marathon.<\/p>\n

The Queensland woman, who had to relearn to walk as a teenager, has now run 551 official marathons, the most of any Australian, according to the Australian 100 club website, which tracks Australians running more than 100 marathons.<\/p>\n

At age 12, Ms Thorburn was a Little Athletics age champion before she was diagnosed with scoliosis and had a steel rod surgically fused to her spine.<\/p>\n

“They told me as a kid: ‘You’re going to have this major surgery, and you’re not allowed to play sport, ever. And you won’t have children, and you won’t work a job,'” she said.<\/p>\n

“I thought I couldn’t do anything.”<\/p>\n

Proving them wrong<\/p>\n

But after marrying young, Ms Thorburn soon, to her surprise, soon became pregnant and gave birth.<\/p>\n

It challenged her concept of what doctors told her was possible.<\/p>\n

“Well, if I can have children, surely I can do other things,” she said.<\/p>\n

Ms Thorburn would load her one-year-old son into a running pram and run around the block “just to see if I could,” she said.<\/p>\n

And she could.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Kaz Thorburn began running as an experiment. (ABC News: James Tugwell)<\/p>\n

She registered for the 14-kilometre City2Surf in Sydney and completed it three years in a row.<\/p>\n

“It sort of took off from that,” she said.<\/p>\n

“People started to see I wasn’t too bad at this so, ‘Why don’t you try a marathon?'”<\/p>\n

‘Cluelessly’ tackling a marathon<\/p>\n

Ms Thorburn said she was “clueless” when she completed her first marathon on the Gold Coast in 1999.<\/p>\n

“I thought, ‘If I get through this today, it will be a miracle, and if I don’t break something or dehydrate myself or fall over. If I just make it to the finish, it will be amazing’,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I had to learn a lot about running and I had to learn a lot about myself.”<\/p>\n

She has now completed what is known as the “six star marathons”: Tokyo, Chicago, London, Paris, Berlin and Boston.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Kaz Thorburn after finishing her third Boston Marathon in 2026. (Supplied: Kaz Thorburn)<\/p>\n

“Never even in my wildest dreams would I think I could qualify for Boston at 55 years old,” she said.<\/p>\n

She has now run in Boston three times and qualified for 2027.<\/p>\n

In 2024, she ran 70 official marathons, the record for an Australian woman in a calendar year.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Kaz Thorburn after completing the Paris Marathon this year. (Supplied: Kaz Thorburn)<\/p>\n

That is one marathon every five days, a feat Ms Thorburn said was only achievable through competing in multi-day marathon events.<\/p>\n

She organises one such event in Townsville, which sees competitors fly in from all around the world to run 30 marathons in 30 days, covering 1,265km.<\/p>\n

“The only way to get through is to keep going,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Every day is day one. Even on day 29, I’m saying, ‘Today is day one.’ As the days go on, you actually start to feel better.”<\/p>\n

‘Gone a bit crazy’<\/p>\n

Ms Thorburn juggles running 70 to 100km every week with her full-time work, two things doctors told her teenage self she would never do.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Kaz Thorburn runs about 70 to 100 kilometres every week for training. (ABC News: James Tugwell)<\/p>\n

“My husband has to stop me from running,” she said.<\/p>\n

“Scoliosis challenged my mental health.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Running has given me my health back. It makes me feel free. I’m running free. Even if it’s raining and miserable, I feel really good when I’m out.”<\/p>\n

In between marathons, Ms Thorburn decided to learn to swim so she could complete an Ironman triathlon, swimming 3.9km, cycling 180km and running a full marathon (42.2km).<\/p>\n

She has now completed eight.<\/p>\n

Rick Patzold from the NSW south coast, who has run more than 450 marathons, the most of any Australian man, said Ms Thorburn had a passion burning inside.<\/p>\n

“It’s a determination to want to achieve something and she’s gone a bit crazy with it recently,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Rick Patzold and Kaz Thorburn after running a marathon together in Sydney in May. (Supplied: Rick Patzold)<\/p>\n

The two recently ran together in a marathon in Sydney, the first event where two Australian runners competed together with more than 1,000 marathons between them.<\/p>\n

“People don’t realise what she’s achieved,” Mr Patzold saidWeakness turned into strength<\/p>\n

Ms Thorburn still carries the metal rod fused to her spine, but she said it helped her maintain an upright and efficient posture.<\/p>\n

\"Tattoos<\/p>\n

After a 100 marathons tattoo, and an Ironman tattoo, Kaz Thorburn said she “had to stop the tattoos or I’d be all the way up at my knee”. (ABC News: James Tugwell)<\/p>\n

“I get sore legs. Everyone gets that. I get tired, I get hungry. But I don’t get a sore back,” she said.<\/p>\n

“The very thing that was the big issue has been the thing to push me through to where I am today.<\/p>\n

“I could have done all this stuff 20 years ago. I’m making up for it now.”<\/p>\n

There are frequent moments when she feels like quitting, but she keeps on running.<\/p>\n

“People ask me: ‘How many? What’s the number you’ll stop at?'” she said.<\/p>\n

“I’ll get to 750 and see how the body is. If I’m still going OK, I’ll push on to 1,000.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The woman who was told she would never play sport and never have children ran across the finish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,342402,342401,2432,44,26673,342403,2434,199253,141122],"class_list":["post-703436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-100-club","tag-kaz-thorburn","tag-marathon","tag-news","tag-north-queensland","tag-rick-patzold","tag-running","tag-running-marathons","tag-scoliosis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}