On Sunday morning, Broadway actor Jordan Litz lined up alongside more than 55,000 other runners at the start of the 2025 New York City Marathon.
A few hours later, after covering 26.2 miles through all five boroughs in three hours and forty minutes, he crossed the finish line in Central Park, sweaty, sore, and smiling.
Most runners would have headed home for a nap. Litz headed straight to the Gershwin Theatre.
The 37-year-old, who stars as Fiyero in Wicked, had two shows to perform that afternoon. He made the 2 p.m. matinee, danced and sang his way through “Dancing Through Life,” then did it all again for the evening performance.
“If I had sat down, I wouldn’t have gotten back up,” he told NBC Nightly News. “I was like, ‘That’s one of the best Dancing Through Life [performances] I’ve done in weeks! Maybe I need to run a marathon more often.’”
It wasn’t a stunt, exactly, just an extreme version of what Litz’s life already looks like.
In an interview with The New York Times the day before the race, he explained how his marathon training often overlapped with his Broadway schedule.
Some Sundays he’d run 18 or 19 miles in the late morning, shower, stretch in his dressing room, and go onstage for two back-to-back shows. “My body’s ready for it,” he said. “But it’s that first show directly after the run that is rough every single time. I’m literally wobbling through life.”
Litz’s background helps explain how he pulled it off. Before Broadway, he was a college swimmer who qualified for the 2012 U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials.
He still treats his routine like an athlete would: strict nutrition, consistent training, and a near-religious recovery regimen involving stretching, steaming, and refueling.
He lives in South Orange, New Jersey, with his wife Julie and their two-year-old daughter, Greta, and commutes into Manhattan most days by train. “NJ Transit is the worst thing created by man,” he joked to the Times.
Even after his marathon-and-double-show day, Litz still made time to greet fans at the stage door, something he says he loves doing whenever possible. “I love to meet the fans and I love to be out there, signing autographs, taking pictures, and inspiring the future generation of Broadway performers,” he said.
Litz told NBC he hopes his daughters will one day look back on that day as proof of what’s possible when you don’t back down from a challenge. “Hopefully, my daughters will look at this accomplishment someday and be like, ‘My dad ran the New York City Marathon and did two shows on Broadway. I can do anything.’”
As for what comes next, he’s already signed up for the 2026 race.
