For some, daily jogs are an easy way to casually become physically active. For others, hitting the pavement is a serious means of daily distance training for 5ks, 10ks and marathons.
But for Oak Park native Jonah Black, what started off as a local, outdoor pastime in 2020 catapulted him into accomplishing the running achievement of a lifetime — completing a 100-mile ultramarathon this past fall, all while fundraising thousands of dollars for an international cause.
For Black, choosing to fundraise for a cause he’s passionate about while running a high-mileage race was intentional.
“There are much easier ways to raise money, but I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could go the distance here,” he explained. “I’m not an ultra-distance runner, but I figured that the best way to platform this organization was to do something that would seem crazy to most people and would be immediately eye-catching. If you tell someone you’re running a marathon, it’s like, ‘OK, good for you!’ But when you tell someone you’re running 100 miles and you’re shooting for less than a day to get it done, they think they heard you wrong.”
Black, a 2021 graduate of Oak Park and River Forest High School, was always an active kid., eventually honing in on baseball and soccer at OPRF.
While Black says he was by no stretch the best player on his teams, he believes that playing sports at the high-school level provided him both strong character building and peer bonding opportunities.
But at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Black decided to try his hand at something he didn’t have much experience with — running — as a way to stay fit. After high school graduation and moving downstate to attend college at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Black began taking running more seriously.
Over the past few years, Black amped up his mileage, eventually working his way toward completing two marathons — most recently, the Illinois Marathon in Champaign last April, finishing with the impressive time of 2 hours, 57 minutes and 27 seconds.
Following the success of his spring marathon, Black began brainstorming ways in which he could not only physically test his running limits, but also combine his blossoming passion with his other burgeoning interests of service and philanthropy.
His decision? Running the ultimate ultramarathon — a 100-mile race — all in the name of charity.
Over the summer, Black decided to run the Tunnel Hill 100 in downstate Vienna in support of Lay First Responder (LFR) International, an international, nonprofit research organization that collaborates with resource-limited communities throughout the world to help develop emergency medical services and train first responders. The organization’s goal is to help prevent needless deaths while people wait for more intensive medical interventions pre-hospital.
Black chose the cause in part due to his growing interest in emergency medical services and healthcare.
Over the last few years, Black has completed emergency medical technician (EMT) training. He volunteers as a disaster action specialist for the Red Cross and works part-time with the Illinois Fire Services Institute in Champaign, where he assists with EMS services mainly on U of I’s campus for events including football games.
As to why Black chose to fundraise and run on behalf of LFR International, his response was simple — his first-hand experience as an EMT, along with researching the impact of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) cuts across the world, ignited a spark in him.
“As an EMT, I have experienced first-hand the importance of rapid emergency care in pre-hospital settings,” he said. “LFR is bringing that same level of responsiveness to places where EMS infrastructure does not exist, working in countries such as Uganda, Sierra Leone and Guatemala. What stuck out to me about LFR is that it was clear from their website that they are committed to working in accord with a certain set of evidentiary standards — and they themselves are constantly updating and improving those standards. So, if you’re an individual like myself looking to maximize per-dollar impact, this was a major green flag because it shows they’re committed not just to their mission but improving upon it, which is probably a rarer find than it should be.”
According to Black, 2025 was a setback year for LFR. While the organization secured a $200,000 USAID grant in 2024 through the Development Innovation Ventures program to compare the efficacy of online, digitally-delivered training versus in-person LFR training in Sierra Leone in 2024, due to President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order and closure of the USAID office, all USAID funding was suspended, directly impacting LFR’s work.
Setting a fundraising goal of $5,000, Black launched a GoFundMe page, eventually raising a total of $5,154 in donations, which he says he donated directly to LFR.
“I think the self-accomplishment side of running ultras is huge, and that was pretty fun to do — but I think seeing LFR benefit in the way that they did from my donations was really rewarding and helped me out there,” he said. “I had some skin in the game for something bigger than myself and something I could keep in the back of my mind.”
Black said the race kicked off on Saturday, Nov. 8 at 7 a.m., and he completed the race around 2:45 a.m. the following day, finishing the race in 19 hours, 44 minutes and 32 seconds, earning him a spot as the 24th overall men’s finisher.
As to how he had the energy to complete the race, Black says he didn’t exactly get his fueling right but somehow made it work out.
“I wanted to compete to the best extent I could, which I figured meant minimizing the time I spent in aid stations and not stopping for a full meal,” he said. “I instead went through like 30-plus Nature Valley bars and a similar quantity of gels, and always had electrolytes on me. I was always snacking on something, especially in the later miles — you’ll feel kind of disgusting, and it’s not the best way to go… but it’ll do the job.”
Now in the final semester of his senior year, Black will be graduating with a degree in computer science and philosophy. While he plans on attending medical school in a few years, his current plan is to take a few years off of schooling to work in EMT services in rural communities in the U.S.
“For me, I saw college more as a way to develop personally and intellectually,” he said. “Medicine has always been in my head, but when I was thinking about what I wanted to study, I wanted that to sort of align with my own academic interests and what I thought would help me grow the most.”
Overall, Black says he hopes what others can take away from his ultramarathon endeavor is that people who feel called to make a positive change in the world can always find a creative, out-of-the-box way to do it.
“I hope others can feel inspired to push themselves a bit more,” he said. “Maybe that thing they want to do that’s been in the back of their head for a few years — maybe they start taking some positive steps in that direction. I think for younger people, this is really important because experiential evidence is the best way to make decisions. I’ve benefitted a lot personally and professionally by doing as much as I can within reason, learning as much as I can and trying as many things at this stage in my life as I can.”
