Darby Allin has kickflipped at 20,958 feet on the way up Mount Everest. He’s jumped through glass, off stages, and out of coffins. So when he casually revealed his next target, a New York City Marathon, on a recent podcast, it made total sense that his training plan is to have no training plan at all.
Allin confirmed on Dr. Beau Hightower’s YouTube channel that he’s running the 2026 New York City Marathon on Nov. 1, his first time ever attempting a long-distance race of any kind. Asked if he has good cardio, Allin didn’t exactly say yes.
“Yes and no. I’m doing the New York Marathon in November, and I told everybody I’m not even going to train once for it and just try to see what happens,” Allin said, laughing.
Dr. Hightower, a chiropractic physician, advised him against that plan. Allin doesn’t seem inclined to take the advice.
The Same “Wing It” Mentality That Got Him Up Everest
Allin first revealed the marathon plan back in June to The Takedown on SI, describing the same approach that carried him up Everest in 2025 with essentially no training beforehand.
“I don’t even have running shoes yet,” Allin told The Takedown on SI. “I kind of want to just go into it fully blind. Everyone’s like, ‘you gotta know what you’re getting yourself into.’ I was like, I kinda wanna just wing it, and it sounds so fun. So I don’t know if I’ll actually train for it. Yeah, I kinda wanna just wing it and push myself.”
He does think his in-ring career gives him something to draw on for the back half of the 26.2 miles. “There’s been times in a match where I’m so physically spent, and then you have that very tail end of the match where you have to give everything, and you don’t think you can even stand, and your body knows how to swim in the deep end,” he said. “So I feel like being in that mindset of pushing yourself to the absolute limit, that’s when I think about the marathon.”
Allin won’t be the first wrestler to take on 26.2 miles. CM Punk has told Stephanie McMahon about running the Chicago Marathon and wrestling the very next day, and WWE presenter Megan Morant finished the 2023 Boston Marathon in three hours. Allin’s version comes with noticeably lower expectations for pace and noticeably higher ones for chaos.
Running for KultureCity
The marathon isn’t just a stunt. Allin is running as part of a roughly fifty-person team raising money for KultureCity, a nonprofit focused on sensory accessibility and inclusion for people with conditions like autism, PTSD, and dementia at events where crowds, lights, and noise can be overwhelming. AEW has worked with the organization since its early days, and the Nov. 1 race falls just two weeks before Full Gear in Phoenix.
The same Hightower conversation doubled as a bit of a highlight reel for Allin’s off-ring interests. He named his skateboarding Mount Rushmore, Tony Hawk, Bam Margera, Geoff Rowley, and Dustin Dollin, and detailed a brutal recent night where a top-rope German suplex from Brody King left him in a wheelchair for two days. None of it sounded like it was going to change his marathon plan.
He’ll Find Out in November
Allin has made a career out of skipping the prep work for things that would send most people to a doctor first, and so far it’s worked out for him. Everest didn’t stop him. Fifteen sharks didn’t stop him. A 26.2-mile run through all five boroughs of New York City is, relatively speaking, one of the tamer entries on his list. Whether his knees agree is a different question, one he’ll get an answer to on Nov. 1.
