Jordan Litz has played Fiyero in Wicked almost 1,800 times, on Broadway and now in the West End’s 20th anniversary production. Last year, he decided to run the New York City Marathon and go straight into two full performances that same day.
Then the press got hold of it. Then SNL joked about it on Weekend Update, the night before the race, while he was lying awake trying to sleep.
This week on The Runna Podcast, Anya sits down with Jordan to talk about the marathon that didn’t go to plan, the forty minutes between the finish line and the stage door, and what two decades of swimming and eight shows a week taught him about doing hard things on repeat.
From the Pool to Broadway - the Path Nobody Would Have Predicted
Jordan swam through to the US Olympic Trials in 2012, the same year as Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte, which meant no one else from the US was making that team regardless of how they swam.
He didn’t take his first stage role until he was 26, in a community production of The Sound of Music, just to test whether he actually loved performing or just enjoyed it once. A few years later working at Disney World later (where he met his wife, a Disney princess for 11 years), he was cast in Wicked six months after moving to New York.
“This Isn’t Gonna Happen." Racing New York With SNL Watching
What started as a casual “yeah, I guess I could do both shows” answer to a New York Times journalist spiralled into national coverage, then a Weekend Update joke about him dying mid-performance, the night before the race.
By mile 13, his hamstring had locked up completely.
“It was like I was the Tin Man. I could not bend my leg,” he says. It’s the only point in the day he considered walking off the course.
He didn’t. He spent the next eight miles taking on salt packets and bananas from strangers, running through Central Park to a crowd of theatre fans shouting “Fiyero” at him, and crossed the line in just over 3:30, the cut-off he needed to make his 1:30pm curtain.
40 Minutes From Finish Line to Stage Door
Jordan had less than an hour to get from Central Park to the theatre. He cried at the finish line seeing his wife and daughter, cried again in his dresser’s arms backstage, then walked out and performed Wicked twice.
“I pressed the play button like I’d done 1,600 times, and it just happened.”
The scariest moment of the day wasn’t the marathon. It was swinging in on a rope ten feet above the stage in act two, wondering if his Achilles was about to go. It didn’t. The second show, he says, was one of the best he'd done in months.
Training for a Marathon Around Eight Shows a Week
Jordan trained for that marathon, the NYC Half, and the Saucony 10K with Runna, fitting workouts around a schedule that leaves him with room for roughly 50 miles a week, not the 70+ needed to run with the athletes chasing 2:30.
"Being able to slide around my workouts when I need to, to adjust around my crazy schedule, is so simple,” he says of training around eight shows and being a dad to two young girls. His wife, Julie, has since started training with Runna herself.
The Redemption Arc
Jordan’s back for the 2026 TCS New York City Marathon, this time with no shows the day before or after. He’s chasing a specific target: the sub-3 hours time Harry Styles reportedly ran, and changing his sleep and eating habits to get there.
“Nothing is hard after that day. Nothing is hard.”