POCATELLO — She's run in Tokyo, Berlin, London and Boston.

With Chicago and New York on her list of accomplishments, too, Kim Strupp has already achieved the coveted Six Star Marathon Medal, a recognition often described as the holy grail for marathon runners.

But come Saturday, the Pocatello native — adorned in the No. 50 number on her chest and back — will fulfill a mission about five years in the making. And regardless of the time on the stopwatch, it's fair to say the moment she crosses the finish line will sit atop many of her previous races.

With family and friends nestled together at the southern end of Lower Ross Park, Strupp is set to join the 50-state club when she finishes the Pocatello Marathon Saturday, concluding the final chapter of a saga she somewhat haphazardly stumbled into in 2021 — right in her hometown.

"I never would have considered myself a runner," Strupp said.

Strupp was born in Pocatello but mostly grew up in Utah, returning to the Gate City for college at Idaho State University, where she earned a dental hygiene degree in 2002. It's also where she met her husband, Trevor, then a dental student. The couple moved to Philadelphia for four years while he finished school, then to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to fulfill a service commitment tied to his scholarship.

They eventually settled in Montana, where they raised their four children — two boys bookending two girls. Three of the kids attend BYU-Idaho, one currently on a mission in Germany, and the youngest is a senior in high school. Strupp, a grandmother now too, says her granddaughter is the highlight of her life.

Running wasn't always part of the picture, however.

Strupp said she never considered herself a runner until after her fourth child was born, when she and her sister started with half marathons as a way to combat a family history of heart disease. Her sister eventually talked her into a full marathon.

"I hated it," Strupp said. "I was like, 'Why would anybody do this? It's terrible.'"

But that first marathon put her close to a Boston Marathon qualifying time, and something clicked. She's since run Boston four times — in 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2026.

The 50-state idea came later, and almost by accident. After her first Boston finish, a friend showed her a photo of a medal rack filled with hardware from all 50 states, and Strupp decided on the spot she wanted one too.

She'd already run marathons in Massachusetts, Utah, Indiana and Arizona by that point, leaving her 46 states to go when she formally committed to the challenge in January 2021.

"I'm sure it's some kind of midlife crisis," Strupp said. "But that's what I did."

In the early years, Strupp and Trevor treated her pursuit of running a marathon in every state across the country like a traveling hobby. They would find open weekends and build trips around whatever state had a race on the calendar — often timed alongside opportunities for Trevor to swing his clubs on links he hadn't yet experienced.

As Strupp's list of remaining states shrank into the teens, the scheduling got tougher, and she had to get more strategic about which races to target and when.

That squeeze occasionally forced her into brutal doubles. This past April, she ran the Jersey City Marathon and then Boston the very next day.

"I really didn't want to, it's not comfortable," Strupp said. "But I had to fit New Jersey in somewhere, and I saw they had one the day before Boston."

She pulled off a similar back-to-back in 2025, running Rhode Island two days before Boston — a gap she said felt a little more manageable.

Balancing back-to-backs wasn't challenging enough apparently. Strupp also managed to pick off the six World Marathon Majors — Boston, New York, Chicago, Berlin, London and Tokyo — over the past few years, earning the Six Star Medal reserved for runners who complete all of the original six.

"I was like, well, if I did the other three in the states, I might as well do those three out of the country too," Strupp said.

Perhaps evidence of the way she looks at running marathons as more of a healthy hobby than a purist pursuit of perfection, Strupp's times have remained remarkably consistent, typically landing around 3 hours and 40 minutes — a figure comfortably inside her current Boston qualifying standard of 3 hours and 45 minutes.

"I feel like if I'm fast enough to qualify for Boston, then that's kind of my bar," Strupp said. "I haven't really tried to get a whole lot faster, but I could."

Saturday's race in Pocatello will be Strupp's 61st marathon overall, a total that includes several repeat races, four trips to Boston and her three international majors.

Strupp said those who have embarked on joining the 50 States Marathon Club before her have left valuable insight in online forums and Facebook groups. One piece of advice she'll cash in on this weekend is saving their final state for somewhere with personal meaning.

Pocatello was the obvious choice given how much family she still has across Utah and Southeast Idaho, including her brother in Blackfoot.

She reached out to the race director directly to request bib No. 50 for the occasion, and in the process learned the director's mother had once been one of her dental hygiene instructors at Idaho State.

"Small world," Strupp said.

Despite the milestone, Strupp said she isn't feeling much different heading into race day than she does before any other marathon at this point.

"I feel like now it's just another race," Strupp said. "I guess you kind of get nervous at the beginning for each one because you know what's coming, but it's just another really long run. I'll try and run it my fastest, but I probably won't."

The Gate City marathon — known officially as the Bingham Healthcare Pocatello Marathon and locally dubbed "Running the Gap" — will hold its 26th iteration Saturday.

It comes into the weekend with a fresh accolade of its own. The race was voted the top marathon in Idaho in FindMyMarathon.com's 2026 Best Marathons by State poll, a nationwide runner vote conducted earlier this year.

It's also a well-regarded stop on the Boston qualifying circuit, with a downhill, point-to-point course that drops roughly 1,500 feet over 26.2 miles, and organizers slightly adjusted the start line this year to keep the course compliant with Boston's elevation-drop rules.

Strupp said the race's reputation within the 50 States Marathon Club, along with its Labor Day weekend timing and proximity to the Salt Lake City airport, made it an easy sell as a destination race for out-of-state runners like her.

"It seems like a lot of them do Pocatello," Strupp said. "It checks a lot of boxes."

Strupp said the choice to save her home state for last was never really in question, with so much of her families scattered across Southeast Idaho and Utah.

"Family around," Strupp said. "Seemed like a good place to end."