ZJ5K 2026: Final Annual Run

The front design of this year’s shirt is inspired by a photograph of Zack and Justin crossing the finish line of the 2006 Marine Corps Marathon. Twenty years ago!

It was Zack’s first and only marathon. Long-distance running would remain one of Justin’s great passions, while Zack would go on to find his endurance challenges elsewhere, including climbing mountains.

But there is something in this photograph that we have always loved. As they approached the finish together, Justin pulled his foot back, allowing Zack to cross the line first.

It is a small gesture, but in retrospect, it feels like a perfect metaphor for the way they lived their lives as brothers. They ran together. They challenged each other. They supported each other. And they celebrated one another’s finish lines.

They ran a great race together—and in the end, were separated by only one step of time.

Underneath them are the words: not fade away.

The back of the shirt tells another part of the story. Its design is inspired by a classic Grateful Dead shirt released after Jerry Garcia died in 1995, marking the end of the Dead’s extraordinary 30-year run. The shirt reduced that enormous history to numbers: years, shows, songs, band members—a statistical record of something that could never really be measured.

Zack and Justin, both mathematicians and lovers of numbers, loved that shirt.

So for the final ZJ5K, we borrowed the idea to tell the story of what all of us have built together.

15 years.
7 continents.
39+ countries and territories.
49 states + D.C.
288+ cities, parks and landmarks.
1,200+ participants.
40 scholarships.
26,000+ miles.

The numbers are extraordinary. But just like the Grateful Dead shirt that inspired it, the numbers aren’t really the story. They are evidence of the story.

For fifteen years, thousands of individual acts of love, remembrance, friendship and community carried two brothers around the world.

Two brothers.
One legacy.

And what we created together will not fade away.