416 miles in 10 days: Wheeling man runs length of Illinois, from Cairo to Wisconsin border

Chase Bandolik is still recuperating.

The Wheeling man was bound to feel lingering effects after what he accomplished, regardless of his youth and fitness level. As an ultramarathoner, trainer, gym owner and former college football player, he’s plenty fit.

But Bandolik ran Illinois’ entire length from south to north — 416.44 miles from Cairo, Illinois, to Beloit, Wisconsin, over 10 days from March 29 to April 7.

Why? Because Bandolik, 28, hadn’t heard of anyone else doing it.

“I wanted to be the first one to claim my home state before anyone else could claim it or document it,” said Bandolik, a Mount Prospect native and former Hersey High School football star. He documented the trip on TikTok, Instagram and through his YouTube channel.

“He continues to shock and inspire me,” said his girlfriend, fellow athletic trainer and content creator Rylee Ollearis, who served as “crew chief” on his journey.

The long-distance run took on greater significance as Bandolik planned it.

Enlisting partners and sponsors such as Mount to Coast running shoes and SaltStick electrolytes to receive sales commissions plus donations from social media followers, Bandolik sought to support his mother, Dawn, a nurse for 35 years.

“She works a ton. She’ll work multiple overnights in a row. I’d just seen how much she sacrificed for us growing up. It really made me want to give back to her,” said Bandolik, one of five siblings.

“I felt this race was really fitting to do so. I felt like it really aligned with how she lived her life, too … She’s got a lot of grit.”

Bandolik, who in 2015 went on from Hersey to play defensive back and linebacker at Illinois Wesleyan University and now owns Chase Bandolik Training in Northbrook, departed from Cairo on March 29.

Trying to get a jump on bad weather, he ran 61 miles, traversing three counties before stopping at De Soto. Ollearis followed in her Buick Encore GX packed with clothes, supplies, food and nutrition sources, or “fuel.” They bunked overnight in hotels.

Bandolik welcomes long distances. He’s run three marathons, starting with the 2019 Chicago Marathon, and has completed 100- and 200-mile runs and an Iron Man.

His main event is a backyard ultra or “last man standing” race. Competitors run a 4.167-mile loop every hour, repeatedly, until they “refuse to continue,” as race results say.

Provided Bandolik overcomes his still-swollen feet and aching hamstrings from the cross-state run, he plans to compete May 25 at the Capital Backyard Ultra in Lorton, Virginia. Last year’s winner ran 270 miles in under 57 hours.

It’s doubtful he’ll have to fend off angry dogs in that event as he did while leaving Cairo.

“The first day consisted of a lot of being chased by dogs,” he said. “There were, like, five separate occasions where I was chased by dogs for almost a quarter of a mile at times.”

Thanks to social media, his followers asked neighbors to keep their dogs indoors as he approached their towns.

Other times, entire schools emptied to cheer him on as he jogged by.

Initially running against traffic to see what was coming, Bandolik switched to the other side of the road after trucks blasted him with wind gusts “like a punch to the stomach over and over again.”

Twice along the way, tornado warnings were issued for the area — the exact street, actually — he and Ollearis were traveling.

Once, a storm chaser parked on the side of the road got out of his car and yelled at Bandolik as he braved the high winds of an approaching storm.

“What are you doing? Get off the road!” Ollearis recalled the warning.

Ollearis picked him up, and “we drove away as fast as we could,” Bandolik said.

With Ollearis handling physical therapy and Dawn Bandolik assisting with foot care, Chase’s daily 41-mile average took a toll as he approached Beloit.

“The last few days, I was struggling to even put weight on my right foot,” he said. “(Ollearis) would help massage out the area so I could get more miles and kind of chip away at it for the last few days.

“That last day was brutal,” he said. “So I was definitely relieved that I was able to get the distance done for the day and complete the mission.”

The ending felt surreal, Ollearis said.

“We had gone on this adventure for 10 days, and we both had an insane amount of emotion through the entire journey, really high highs, really low lows,” she said.

“There was a sense of relief and numbness at the same time.”

Bandolik did it on his own two feet. But with Ollearis, he was never alone. Phone calls with friends and family and support from TikTok fans helped him push on.

“I think there’s a lot of people who helped,” Bandolik said. “I really learned that you don’t have to take on everything on your own, and things get easier when you can trust other people and rely on other people to kind of help on those big goals.”

Good advice for December, when Bandolik will try to break the world record for holding an abdominal plank, now at 9 hours, 38 minutes, 47 seconds.

“It’ll be fun to problem solve and figure out how to get this new challenge done,” he said.