The Mom and Son Who Ran a Marathon Together in Every State

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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 you know it's just something that we did. I really enjoy running a lot you know it's something that we set out to do a while ago you know 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 you know 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 no pun intended there and then my daughter-in-law Vicki's 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 like 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 big football player kind of guy and he says it's okay and he puts out his arms and just kind of walked walked us all through the moose passage right there but you want to tell 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 in pure pain but I was determined not to have to go back to Montana we're knocking off that state so because if you don't finish you 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 um yeah I mean 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 gonna last and then pretty much around mile four five or six I just felt like you could just feel it pop um I knew it had well it was it was it wasn't full break it was a stress fracture so but you get but you felt I felt this moment where it's like blinding pain and I knew something was wrong and then it was just I was you know I'm like okay I can get through this so I I hobbled so to speak um they I was 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 yeah I I remember stopping at a rest stop and having to go to the bathroom and being unable to get out of the vehicle so and another one was Maui that was wonderful and um when we finished the marathon in Maui we you you go you walk right into the ocean it was just amazing yeah so I think our our favorites would probably be well Maui's mine Maui was mine um Alaska Maine was beautiful too and that was our last one Maine was our very last one it was beautiful we ran into Vicki helped me we ran into Canada went by camp below Teddy Roosevelt's camp yeah yeah oh yeah we went by um Lubbock Maine is where we were and it was just beautiful yeah and we had to bring our passports because we ran into Canada so some of the marathons you run into other countries so Detroit was another one so you so if you're going to do that you have to bring your passport so that you can but you know get in get in and out of the country um gosh can you think of any other ones that you really liked I 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 about well at the height 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 um Vaseline because Advil because what happens is you 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 far and I finished and it looked like somebody had grabbed my arm and just held it so 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 I 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 17 it took us 17 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 maybe up it to 13 you know for not every day but just you know one like I'd run a week before I try to get in a 13 miler for a while um toward the end Vicki would run with me to help me help me prep but basically we would just I would just increase my mileage every day that's pretty much all I I did to train did you ever train Joe yeah I mean I 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 so 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 know you lose toenails yes you do there were a couple years where I wouldn't wear sandals because my feet look so horrible but um 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 that's kind of what it feels like for me and 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 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 yeah I kind of I kind of just start you know visualizing that and hearing the announcer in my head to 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 you made it through another 26.2 miles so um 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 we'll see what happens as time goes on I still run every day my husband and I run every day and Joe you want to he's still running he's still going to be doing marathons so yeah no I'm still like still doing marathons you know I have a marathon in a couple weeks here so I'm gonna keep going I've got quite a few more to do and a great job on the storytelling by Greg 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's story here on Our American Stories there's nothing like 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