PORTLAND, Ore. — When Nancy Bruton was running the Hood to Coast Relay in 2014, she didn't realize she'd find her future husband, Jay Carleton, running the same relay. Carleton had started running several years prior as a way to lose weight, but wanted to have a little fun while jogging, so he wore a costume. That unique running style led to a chance encounter with his future wife at the 2014 finish line in Seaside, Oregon.
It's fitting Bruton and Carleton's story begins at the finish line, since it's the finish line that would set the mark for a decade-long journey of traveling the world and falling in love.
"It was on the KGW Hood to Coast team that our then anchor Mark [Hanrahan] turned to me and said go talk to 'Team Yogging' — which was a team dressed up as the Anchorman news team," Bruton said referring to the 2004 Will Ferrell movie, "Anchorman."
Carleton was dressed as Ferrell's character Ron Burgundy and had just finished the race when Bruton ran up to him.
"All of a sudden, this bright bundle of energy just tackles me: Nancy's positivity and excitement and energy," Carleton said. "It felt like we had just been happily mugged."
They didn't think much of that brief encounter — two strangers running into each other and each going their separate ways.
They would run into each other again during a Timbers running club event. Carleton had gone running before the run, so had Bruton.
"So, I show up to the starting line and I'm already a hot, sweaty sort of a gross mess," Carleton said. "Then, Nancy rolls up and also having run before the run, she was not a hot, gross, sweaty mess!"
The two reconnected, realizing that they had taken a picture a year earlier.
"Our paths were always crossing; we were always meant to find each other," Bruton said.
The two attended running club events and Timbers matches together but remained friends. After a Timbers win during a 2015 match in Seattle, the two were celebrating at a bar in Seattle when Bruton told Carleton her big dream.
"That's where Nancy tells me of her dream of running a marathon on every continent," Jay said. "'What do you say?' It was 'you're allowed to join me on this journey, but don't you dare do it without me.'"
"You have to cross the finish line with me, not before me," Bruton replied.
The two would start dating shortly after that dream was shared. Carleton, who works for the Danish wind farm turbine manufacturing company Vestas, which has its U.S. headquarters in Portland. Carleton was promoted and relocated to Denmark. Bruton and Carleton would maintain a long distance relationship, meeting up every three months.
Having previously running several marathons before they knew each other, they both crossed North America off their list, leaving just six more to go.
In 2017, they crossed Europe off the list, registered and ran in The Dingle Marathon in Ireland, learning about each other along the course.
"This is when it became glaringly obvious what different run styles we have," Carleton said. "I like to do negative splits; I start very slow and every kilometer I pick up speed. Nancy takes out like at a full sprint and just keeps going as fast as she can."
"That time, we spent more time with sheep than we did with each other," Bruton added.
They married in 2018, after Jay proposed at the Portland International Airport. They celebrated with family the following year, crafting their wedding invites to look like running bibs.
Over the next several years, they would travel the world running one marathon after another, crossing continents off their list.
The couple signed up to run in the Antarctic Marathon in 2020, but it was postponed, as COVID-19 restrictions shut foreign borders down, and Carleton and Bruton were living at the time in Denmark. That same year, Carleton's job relocated him and Bruton to Vietnam, helping cross Asia off the list with the Vietnam Trail Run, the hardest of the seven continental marathons.
"We didn't realize we had signed up for one of the hardest races of our lives and the most dangerous. I cannot get over how dangerous that race was," Carleton said.
Three years later, in 2023 they had a second chance at Antarctica.
"It was an adventure to say the least," Bruton said.
When they first signed up for the race in 2018, they were living in the cold weather of Denmark. This time they had relocated again to Sao Paulo, Brazil and trained in the hot, humid weather of South America. While surrounded by sheep in Ireland, this time they found themselves surrounded by penguins in Antarctica.
"We're the only people that left the boat, got out and immediately stripped out of our giant parkas, wearing just shoes and a formal blue dress and I'm in fancy clothes in a bowtie and we got penguins behind us," Carleton recalled.
The Antarctic race was different than the others: Instead of thousands of runners, the race was a six-lap loop between four different research stations along a gravel and dirt path.
"We're following a path; we're going from ice, rocks, water, mud, dirt, back to ice. Turn around at the water, so it's like up, down, up, down," Carleton said.
After the race, Carleton and Bruton went back home to Sao Paulo and ran in a marathon just days later, crossing South America off their list days after Antarctica.
"It was like back-to-back marathons; it was very extreme," Carleton said.
In the beginning of 2024, they finished their sixth continental marathon on the island of New Zealand. They say it was very similar to running a race in Portland.
"I've never ran a race that was so similar to a race in Oregon as in New Zealand," Bruton said. "They're both on 45th parallels, the pace, the ecosystems. Everything felt similar to home."
On Oct. 20, Carleton and Bruton completed their goal after running in the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon in Cape Town, South Africa.
"I personally felt this reminded me a lot of Portland. Portland was my first marathon and Cape Town being the last one on this list, I just thought it was an amazing start to finish for me," Bruton said.
With the ultimate goal of running seven marathons on seven continents, finished the way Bruton had envisioned it: crossing together, not one person in front of the other.
"We cross ,and you check the official times," Carleton said to Bruton. "We have the literal same times. We managed to start and finish that race exactly together."
What began as a chance encounter at a finish line in Oregon ended as Bruton and Carleton had achieved their goal.
"I thought I was gonna cry, but we celebrated. We were so excited and so overwhelmed," Bruton said about crossing the finish line in Cape Town.
It was a decade-long journey through ups and downs, restrictions and redirections, that they completed together side by side.
"What's interesting is that I felt this was gonna be kind of a final chapter on my marathons, but I think it's kind of opening the door to what's next," Bruton said.
What's next remains to be seen — maybe running a marathon in North America together. Carleton says he'd like to run on the ocean in Arctic circle when it's frozen over.