April 3, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Our American Stories listener Karen Thomson and her son, Joe Meilink, are the definition of determination. Here they are, along with Joe’s wife, Vicky, to share their story.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories, and up next
a listener's story Aaron Thompson and her son Joe Milink
of the definition of determination. Here they are along with
Joe's wife Vicky, to share their story.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I've always said we're kind of a strangely competitive family.
And the other thing about our family is we're very active.
Our avocation to us is backpacking. I wouldn't say we
do extreme sports, but we we do.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
We do like to push it.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Yeah, it's 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.
Speaker 5 (01:03):
A while ago.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
You know, we were just running marathons and we realized
that we had knocked off so many states, and one
moment where it was like, oh, we have you know,
ten or twelve states already knocked off.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
And that's when Joe said, well, why don't we try
to do all fifty states?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
And at the time I said sure, let's just yeah,
why not, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
And so what happened was kind of before the pandemic,
we said we.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Probably need to pick up the pace.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
No pun intended there, and then my daughter in law,
Vicky is the one who organizes everything.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
We could not have done it without Vicky.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Because she's our pit crew extraordinary and she lines everything up.
But we would turn it into like many vacations like Alaska,
that was a family vacation and some of the family
ran a half, but Joe and I ran the full.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
And that's where we saw the moose.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
And he just kind of stops and looks around.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
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
in why was it Montana?
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (02:28):
I broke my leg around about five or six and
then shuffle walked the last twenty miles of it in
pure pain.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
But I was determined not to have to go back
to Montana. We're knocking off that.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
State, so because if you don't finish, she got to
go back to that state. And we were happy to
be able to finish that, but he wasn't quite a
bit of pain.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
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 you could just feel it pop.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
I knew it had it was. It wasn't full break.
It was a stress fracture. So but you get but
you felt.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
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. They
I was obviously I was dead last.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
It took him six hours and forty nine minutes, which
actually that's not bad time when you think about the
broken leg.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
I remember stopping at a rest stop and having you
leave the bathroom and being unable to get out of
the vehicle.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
So another one was Maui. That was wonderful.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And when we finished the marathon and Maui you go,
you walk right into the ocean.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
It was just amazing.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, so I think our our favorites would probably be, well,
Maui's mine, Maui is mine. Alaska, Maine was beautiful too,
and that was our last one. Maine was our very
last one.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
It was beautiful. We ran into Vicky Hilpon. We ran
into Canada, went.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
By Camp Belows, Teddy Borsels Camp. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah,
we went by Love Big Maine is where we were,
and it was just beautiful.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
And we had to bring our passports because we ran
into Canada. So some of the marathons you run into
other countries.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Soroit Detroit was another one.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So so if you're going to do that, you have
to bring your passport so that you can, you know,
get in, get in and out of the country.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Gosh, can you think of any other ones that you
really liked.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
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.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
They all blend together.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
There's certain moments I remember, like the painful ones, but
other than that, they just all seemed to blend together.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Yeah. So how many marathons would we do a year? About? Well,
at the high.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
We do five or six, so it's really important and
helpful to have somebody follow you through the marathon. Picky brings,
she has water, she has vasoline because that bill.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Because what happens is you chafe really bad.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
I remember my very first marathon was actually in Saint Louis,
and somebody offered the do you want fasoline? I'm like, well,
whatever far and I finished and it looked like somebody
had grabbed my arm and just held it.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
It was like, look bruised, but it wasn't bruised.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
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 the mistakes. It's almost a
bruise would feel better, but the chafing is very painful.
So it took us how many years to do this?
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Seventeen?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
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 marathon I'm maybe up at thirteen,
(06:37):
you know, not every day, but just you know what,
Like i'd run a week before, I'd try to get
in a thirteen miler for a while toward the end,
VICKI would run with me to help me, help me prep.
But basically we would just I would just increase my
mile age every day.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
That's pretty much all I did to train. Did you
ever train, Joe?
Speaker 5 (06:57):
Yeah, I mean I run a lot every single week.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
She's done running marathons, but I have quite a few
more goals to achieve.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
So you know, I run sixty seventy miles a week
for training.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
So yeah, and I'm not sure I'm quite done running marathons, but.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Feet looks so horrible.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
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 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
(07:58):
we would come across the finish line and we join
hands and would hold them up high so and they
would have they wouldn't. It's always always a thrill when
they announced us. Actually toward the end, I kind of
just start, you know, visualizing that and hearing the announcer.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
In my head to kind of get me through that
last part. It's like it's almost over.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
It's almost over, and sometimes it's kind of emotional that
you you made it through another twenty six point two miles.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
So for my sixtieth birthday, I wanted to do the
m R.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
It's called the m R three forty and it's a
race down the Missouri River from.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Kansas City to Saint Charles.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Dangerous thing to do.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
And I said, oh, this is a race, and Joseph, 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 Saint Charles. And the
(09:10):
time those four days that it took us to do it,
we slept maybe seven hours.
Speaker 5 (09:15):
So you don't.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
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 sixty five, so we're
going to do it again. So that's kind of replaced
my marathons for now. We'll see what happens this 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.
Speaker 5 (09:38):
So yeah, no, I'm still still doing marathons. You know.
I have a marathon in a couple of.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Weeks here, so I'm going to keep going.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
I've got quite a few more to do.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Had a great job on the storytelling by Greg Angler,
and a special thanks to Karen Thompson and her son
Joe my link along with Joe's wife Vicki their story
and the kids in the background, well, they in their
own way shared their story too. They'd run marathons in
twelve states, and in came that suggestion. Every family knows
that person who suggests something like this, Hey, let's do
(10:12):
all fifty, and what do you know? They do it,
and they finish them all over a seventeen 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.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
A remarkable and.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Beautiful listener's story. Here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories, and up next
a listener's story Aaron Thompson and her son Joe Milink
of the definition of determination. Here they are along with
Joe's wife Vicky, to share their story.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I've always said we're kind of a strangely competitive family.
And the other thing about our family is we're very active.
Our avocation to us is backpacking. I wouldn't say we
do extreme sports, but we we do.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
We do like to push it.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
Yeah, it's 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.
Speaker 5 (01:03):
A while ago.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
You know, we were just running marathons and we realized
that we had knocked off so many states, and one
moment where it was like, oh, we have you know,
ten or twelve states already knocked off.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
And that's when Joe said, well, why don't we try
to do all fifty states?
Speaker 3 (01:21):
And at the time I said sure, let's just yeah,
why not, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
And so what happened was kind of before the pandemic,
we said we.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Probably need to pick up the pace.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
No pun intended there, and then my daughter in law,
Vicky is the one who organizes everything.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
We could not have done it without Vicky.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Because she's our pit crew extraordinary and she lines everything up.
But we would turn it into like many vacations like Alaska,
that was a family vacation and some of the family
ran a half, but Joe and I ran the full.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
And that's where we saw the moose.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
And he just kind of stops and looks around.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
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
in why was it Montana?
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (02:28):
I broke my leg around about five or six and
then shuffle walked the last twenty miles of it in
pure pain.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
But I was determined not to have to go back
to Montana. We're knocking off that.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
State, so because if you don't finish, she got to
go back to that state. And we were happy to
be able to finish that, but he wasn't quite a
bit of pain.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
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 you could just feel it pop.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
I knew it had it was. It wasn't full break.
It was a stress fracture. So but you get but
you felt.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
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. They
I was obviously I was dead last.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
It took him six hours and forty nine minutes, which
actually that's not bad time when you think about the
broken leg.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:43):
I remember stopping at a rest stop and having you
leave the bathroom and being unable to get out of
the vehicle.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
So another one was Maui. That was wonderful.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And when we finished the marathon and Maui you go,
you walk right into the ocean.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
It was just amazing.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, so I think our our favorites would probably be, well,
Maui's mine, Maui is mine. Alaska, Maine was beautiful too,
and that was our last one. Maine was our very
last one.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
It was beautiful. We ran into Vicky Hilpon. We ran
into Canada, went.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
By Camp Belows, Teddy Borsels Camp. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah,
we went by Love Big Maine is where we were,
and it was just beautiful.
Speaker 5 (04:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
And we had to bring our passports because we ran
into Canada. So some of the marathons you run into
other countries.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Soroit Detroit was another one.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So so if you're going to do that, you have
to bring your passport so that you can, you know,
get in, get in and out of the country.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Gosh, can you think of any other ones that you
really liked.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
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.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
They all blend together.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
There's certain moments I remember, like the painful ones, but
other than that, they just all seemed to blend together.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Yeah. So how many marathons would we do a year? About? Well,
at the high.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
We do five or six, so it's really important and
helpful to have somebody follow you through the marathon. Picky brings,
she has water, she has vasoline because that bill.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Because what happens is you chafe really bad.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
I remember my very first marathon was actually in Saint Louis,
and somebody offered the do you want fasoline? I'm like, well,
whatever far and I finished and it looked like somebody
had grabbed my arm and just held it.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
It was like, look bruised, but it wasn't bruised.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
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 the mistakes. It's almost a
bruise would feel better, but the chafing is very painful.
So it took us how many years to do this?
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Seventeen?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
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 marathon I'm maybe up at thirteen,
(06:37):
you know, not every day, but just you know what,
Like i'd run a week before, I'd try to get
in a thirteen miler for a while toward the end,
VICKI would run with me to help me, help me prep.
But basically we would just I would just increase my
mile age every day.
Speaker 3 (06:54):
That's pretty much all I did to train. Did you
ever train, Joe?
Speaker 5 (06:57):
Yeah, I mean I run a lot every single week.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
She's done running marathons, but I have quite a few
more goals to achieve.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
So you know, I run sixty seventy miles a week
for training.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
So yeah, and I'm not sure I'm quite done running marathons, but.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Feet looks so horrible.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
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 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
(07:58):
we would come across the finish line and we join
hands and would hold them up high so and they
would have they wouldn't. It's always always a thrill when
they announced us. Actually toward the end, I kind of
just start, you know, visualizing that and hearing the announcer.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
In my head to kind of get me through that
last part. It's like it's almost over.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
It's almost over, and sometimes it's kind of emotional that
you you made it through another twenty six point two miles.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
So for my sixtieth birthday, I wanted to do the
m R.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
It's called the m R three forty and it's a
race down the Missouri River from.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Kansas City to Saint Charles.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
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.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Dangerous thing to do.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
And I said, oh, this is a race, and Joseph, 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 Saint Charles. And the
(09:10):
time those four days that it took us to do it,
we slept maybe seven hours.
Speaker 5 (09:15):
So you don't.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
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 sixty five, so we're
going to do it again. So that's kind of replaced
my marathons for now. We'll see what happens this 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.
Speaker 5 (09:38):
So yeah, no, I'm still still doing marathons. You know.
I have a marathon in a couple of.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Weeks here, so I'm going to keep going.
Speaker 5 (09:47):
I've got quite a few more to do.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Had a great job on the storytelling by Greg Angler,
and a special thanks to Karen Thompson and her son
Joe my link along with Joe's wife Vicki their story
and the kids in the background, well, they in their
own way shared their story too. They'd run marathons in
twelve states, and in came that suggestion. Every family knows
that person who suggests something like this, Hey, let's do
(10:12):
all fifty, and what do you know? They do it,
and they finish them all over a seventeen 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.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
A remarkable and.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Beautiful listener's story. Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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