The finish line for Jason Boschan's 48th state sits at the foot of the New Hampshire State House, on Main Street in Concord. Getting there means 13.1 miles of downhill running that begin at an apple orchard in Hopkinton, wind along tree-lined country roads, and spill out into the small-city streets of Concord. For most of the field, the Delta Dental New England Half Marathon is simply a beautiful autumn race. For Boschan, it is the latest leg of a campaign that has already carried him across seven continents.
Boschan is running the race as part of "#50for50," his effort to complete 50 half marathons in 50 states while raising money and awareness for Alzheimer's and related dementia research. New Hampshire will be state No. 48. "I considered several races in New Hampshire, but the Delta Dental Half Marathon immediately felt right," Boschan said. "After 47 half marathons in 47 states, I'm excited to take on the Granite State. There's no better way to experience New Hampshire's legendary fall foliage than by running 13.1 miles through it."
The race itself is a distinctive one. It is a point-to-point, downhill course that starts at Gould Hill Farm, a working apple orchard in Contoocook with long views over the fall landscape, and finishes in front of the State House. The course has a 3.5-hour time limit and an 8 a.m. start. Because there is no parking at the orchard, runners are dropped off and bussed, and the whole field funnels from farm country into the middle of the capital.
The story behind Boschan's running is older than the campaign. It begins with his grandfather, Louis "Papa" Heyman, a pediatrician who practiced for more than 50 years and cared for low-income patients in their homes, climbing flights of stairs well into his eighties. In 2009, Heyman was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia, a rare form of dementia that gradually strips away a person's ability to communicate and comprehend language. Boschan's family had never heard of it. "My grandpa went from being pretty able-bodied," Boschan has said. "He went from practicing medicine, and treating low-income patients in their homes and climbing flights of stairs at 80 years old. To see him trapped in his own head was difficult."
Heyman died in 2013. By then, his grandson had already turned grief into motion. Boschan, a marketer by day who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was born and raised in Detroit, had never been a distance runner. He ran his first marathon — the 2010 New York City Marathon — without training, inspired by his grandfather, and it was during that race that the idea for Run4Papa took shape. He started with a few 5Ks and 10Ks, then a handful of half marathons, and closed that first year by running across the Great Wall of China. Families and caregivers reached out to support the cause, and the one-year project became an organization.
What followed was an unusual running résumé. Boschan has completed marathons on all seven continents, including races in Boston, Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro, South Africa, and Antarctica. In May 2022 he ran the Everest Marathon. That effort required 11 days of hiking to Everest Base Camp, an average of more than five hours a day, before running the world's highest marathon in 10 hours, 41 minutes, and 29 seconds. He has described the motivation simply: "Everybody has their own Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb. Mine is running to find a cure for dementia."
Run4Papa's research partnership has evolved over the years. The organization long supported the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, where Boschan's grandfather had sought treatment and where Boschan connected with other PPA patients and their caregivers. Its current partner is the University of Chicago's Healthy Aging & Alzheimer's Research Care (HAARC) Center, led by Dr. Emily Rogalski, the longtime research partner at Northwestern who now directs the UChicago center. Rogalski's lab studies people at two extremes of aging: "superagers," whose memory in their eighties and beyond rivals that of people decades younger, and people with primary progressive aphasia. Understanding what makes superagers resistant to cognitive decline may help explain why others are vulnerable to it.
For the #50for50 campaign, Boschan has set a $50,000 fundraising goal — "50 states. 50 half marathons. One finish line: $50,000 for dementia research" — and a clinical trial goal of launching a nationwide online SuperAgers study that would include participants from all 50 states. He emphasizes that 100 percent of every dollar raised goes directly to research, and that all of his travel is self-funded. "No one is flying me out here and putting me up," he has said. "I am here because I want to raise this awareness." He also wears a custom shirt tailored to each city he runs in, precisely so that other runners and spectators will ask him what the cause is about.
Boschan is not running to win. "I might not be leading the pack," he has said. The point is the conversation the shirt starts and the money it moves. He frames the stakes in numbers: roughly 7 million people in the United States are living with Alzheimer's, a figure projected to climb toward 13 million by 2050, with health and long-term care costs for people with dementia projected to approach $1 trillion by mid-century.
For spectators in New Hampshire, the race offers an easy way to see the campaign up close. The course runs from orchard country in Hopkinton and Contoocook down into Concord, and the finish in front of the State House is open to anyone who wants to stand along Main Street and watch the field come in. Boschan's stated plan is to keep going after New Hampshire, through states 49 and 50 and beyond. "I will continue to run races all over the world in honor of my Papa and everyone who is battling or has lost loved ones to this vicious disease," he said. "I won't stop until a cure is found."