A Mom and Son Run a Marathon in Every State

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Learn more at KeySoulCare.com. And we continue with our American Stories. And up next, a listener's story. Karen Thompson and her son, Joe Meilink, are the definition of determination.

Here they are along with Joe's wife, Vicki, to share their story. I've always said we're kind of a strangely competitive family. And the other thing about our family is we're very active.

A vacation to us is backpacking. I wouldn't say we do extreme sports, but we do like to push it. Yeah, it's kind of weird because it's just something that we did.

I really enjoy running a lot. It's something that we set out to do a while ago. We were just running marathons, and we realized that we had knocked off so many states. And one moment, we were just like, oh, we have 10 or 12 states already knocked off. And that's when Joe said, well, why don't we try to do all 50 states? And at the time, I said, sure, let's just, yeah, why not? Let's do it.

And so what happened was kind of before the pandemic, we said, we probably need to pick up the pace. No pun intended there. And then my daughter-in-law, Vicki, is the one who organizes everything. We could not have done it without Vicki because she's our pit crew extraordinaire, and she lines everything up.

But we would turn it into mini vacations, like Alaska, that was a family vacation. And some of the family ran a half, but Joe and I ran the full. And that's where we saw the moose. And there was this little guy that kept running ahead of us and dropping back. And he's running ahead of us, and he sees the moose. And he just kind of stops and looks around. And there was this other guy who was a big football player kind of guy. And he says, it's okay. And he puts out his arms and just kind of walked us all through the moose passage right there.

But do you want to tell them about how you broke your leg and why? Was it Montana? Yeah, I broke my leg around mile five or six and then shuffle-walked the last 20 miles of it in pure pain. But I was determined not to have to go back to Montana. We were knocking off that state.

Because if you don't finish, you've got to go back to that state. And we were happy to be able to finish that, but he was in quite a bit of pain. Yeah, it was hurting before the marathon quite a bit. And I pretty much stopped running for about two weeks.

The pain subsided a little bit. But right away when we started, I knew it wasn't going to last. And then pretty much around mile four, five, or six, you could just feel it pop.

I knew it had... It wasn't full break. It was a stress fracture. But I felt this moment where it was like blinding pain and I knew something was wrong. And then it was just... I was like, I can get through this. So I hobbled, so to speak. Obviously, I was dead last.

It took them six hours and 49 minutes, which actually that's not bad time when you think about the broken leg. I remember stopping at a rest stop and having to go to the bathroom and being unable to get out of the vehicle. So another one was Maui. That was wonderful. And when we finished the marathon in Maui, you walk right into the ocean.

It was just amazing. So I think our favorites would probably be... Maui's mine. Maui was mine.

Alaska. Maine was beautiful, too. And that was our last one. Maine was our very last one. It was beautiful. We ran into... Vicki, help me. We ran into Canada, went by... Camp Belo. One of Teddy Roosevelt's camps. Yeah, we went by Lubbock, Maine is where we were.

And it was just beautiful. And we had to bring our passports because we ran into Canada. So some of the marathons you run into other countries. Detroit was another one.

So if you're going to do that, you have to bring your passport so that you can get in and out of the country. Gosh, can you think of any other ones that you really liked? I have a tendency not to remember them at all, like at all. So I'm like the worst source of information about them because I don't remember them. They all blend together. There's certain moments I remember, like the painful ones. But other than that, they just all seem to blend together. Yeah. So how many marathons would we do a year?

Well, at the height we do five or six. So it's really important and helpful to have somebody follow you through the marathon. Vicki brings, she has water, she has Vaseline because... Advil. Advil, because what happens is you chafe really bad.

I remember my very first marathon was actually in St. Louis. And somebody offered, do you want Vaseline? I'm like, well, whatever for? And I finished and it looked like somebody had grabbed my arm and just held it. It was like, look bruised. But it wasn't bruised. It was from the rubbing and the chafing of, you know, your arms rubbing against your body. And I went, oh, and it hurts.

Make no mistake. It's almost a bruise would feel better. But the chafing is very painful. So it took us how many years to do this? Seventeen.

It took us seventeen years to do this. So as time went on, you know, I got slower and he got faster, of course. I really never trained. I would run at least four miles a day. I mean, when I say at least, I mean at least four miles a day. And then before a marathon, I'm maybe up to 13. You know, not every day, but just, you know, like I'd run a week before I try to get in a 13 miler. For a while, toward the end, Vicky would run with me to help me prep.

But basically we would just, I would just increase my mileage every day. That's pretty much all I did to train. Did you ever train, Joe?

Yeah. I mean, I run a lot every single week. She's done running marathons, but I have quite a few more goals to achieve. So, you know, I run 60, 70 miles a week for training.

Yeah. And I'm not sure I'm quite done running marathons, but, but maybe, I don't know. One of the things we like to do before a marathon is to go out and have sushi. And then afterwards, I am very sore. You've always heard of, you know, be kind of gross, but you lose toenails.

Yes, you do. There were a couple of years where I wouldn't wear sandals because my feet looked so horrible. But it kind of feels like you got the flu.

Like you got a really bad case of the flu where everything's sore. Yeah. That's kind of what it feels like for me. And so this, you know, this too will pass. So, yeah. We got to the point where we started making a point to finish together. So we would come across the finish line and we'd join hands and would hold them up high.

So, and they, they would have, they wouldn't, it's always, always a thrill when they announce this. Actually toward the end, I kind of, I kind of just started, you know, visualizing that and hearing the announcer in my head to kind of get me through that last part. It's like, it's almost over.

It's almost over. And sometimes it's kind of emotional that you made it through another 26.2 miles. So for my 60th birthday, I wanted to do the MR, it's called the MR340 and it's a race down the Missouri River from Kansas City to St. Charles. And Joe drove us to Kansas City and we're sitting in the safety meeting because everybody has to go to safety meeting because it's kind of a dangerous thing to do. And I said, oh, this is a race.

And Joe says, yeah, mom, it's a race. So my husband and I have an old town canoe and we paddled it as fast as we could, which is like paddling a barge. And we made it from Kansas City to St. Charles. And the time goes at four days that it took us to do it. We slept maybe seven hours.

So you don't sleep. You just keep paddling. Yeah. Just keep going. Keep going. Just like a marathon. You just keep going.

You just keep going. And this year I'm 65, so we're going to do it again. So that's kind of replaced my marathons for now.

We'll see what happens as time goes on. I still run every day. My husband and I run every day.

And Joe, he's still running. He's still going to be doing marathons. Yeah, no, I'm still doing marathons. I have a marathon in a couple of weeks here. So I'm going to keep going.

I have quite a few more to do. And a great job on the storytelling by Craig Hengler and a special thanks to Karen Thompson and her son, Joe Mylink, along with Joe's wife, Vicki. They share their story and the kids in the background. Well, they in their own way shared their story, too. They'd run marathons in 12 states. And in came that suggestion. Every family knows that person who suggests something like this. Hey, let's do all 50. And what do you know?

They do it. And they finish them all over a 17 year period, treating each one like a family vacation with family rituals, including that sushi meal and coming to the finish line as a family holding their hands up. A remarkable and beautiful listener story here on Our American Stories. For each person living with myasthenia gravis or MG, their journey with this rare condition is unique. That's why Untold Stories Life with myasthenia gravis, a new podcast from I Heart Radio in partnership with Argenics, is exploring the extraordinary challenges and personal triumphs of underserved communities living with MG. Host Martine Hackett will share these powerful perspectives from real people with MG so their experiences can help inspire the MG community and educate others about this rare condition.

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