Running Toward The Light
Reflections on a family tragedy and what it means to win a Memorial Day road race started in honor of my late aunt
Note from the author: This story was written a year ago, on Memorial Day 2021. It was edited and updated on Memorial Day 2022.
On my bedroom wall hangs four rows of race bibs safety-pinned together, each row a different year of racing, from 2017 to the present. There are races of all lengths on all surfaces — everything from a one-mile track race to a 100-mile trail race.
When I look at the rows, I remember each race fondly.
There was the Smith Rock Ascent in central Oregon’s beautiful Smith Rock State Park, my first foray into the world of ultra-marathon racing. I’d yet to run a marathon-length race so, naturally, I jump up to a trail 50k distance. What could possibly go wrong?
There was Wine on the Vine, an oddball 5-mile adventure race on an Oregon vineyard, featuring a giant slip-n’-slide on the side of a hill. Every runner had to go down it on their way to the finish line.
There was the Rose City Mile at Duniway Track in southwest Portland, my first track race in nearly 20 years. The mile was always my favorite distance, but I hadn’t trained for one in years. I still clocked 5:15 in the third fastest heat.
So many memories in those miles I covered as fast as I could. So many more memories in all those miles I logged training for every race.
I’ve experienced huge peaks of emotion over the years as I quietly worked to regain the runner I was before succumbing to a serious drug problem, but there’s no higher peak than winning the race that was started to honor my late aunt, Amy Jeanne Thompson.
The Amy Thompson Run to Daylight, as it was known for 30 years before being rebranded to the Going the Distance 10k, began in 1987 in Kansas City, Missouri.
I grew up running this race with my dad, a sub-3-hour marathoner and enthusiastic hobby runner who jumped on the bandwagon when recreational running took off in the 1970s. It was our thing together, a male bonding ritual every year on Memorial Day.
It was also the first race I ever ran. In early 1992, my family moved back to Kansas City, our hometown, from Darien, Connecticut, where we’d been living for four years. I ran my first “Amy Run”, as we called it, that May.
Back then, at 11 years old, five miles might as well have been five hundred. It took me hours to complete, and I remember how exhausted I felt by the time I crossed the finish line.
From fourth grade through high school, I ran this race every May. I got faster over the years, often winning my age group, but the race was never about any personal accolade. It was about remembering Amy and the many others whose lives had been irrevocably altered by traumatic brain injuries.
On the night of October 31, 1986, 23-year-old Amy Thompson was shot three times, point-blank, in the back of her head after leaving a party and getting into her car to drive home. Her assailant, a 17-year-old man named Richard Scott, intended to rob her for drug money.
Two of Amy’s friends, whom Amy was driving home, came shortly after her to the car and got in the backseat, completely unaware of what was going on. Scott would later testify that he accidentally fired because he was surprised, but the fact that he shot her three times negated that claim.
Two bullets penetrated Amy’s skull and lodged in her brain, while a third went through her vocal cords. Scott fled the scene but was apprehended a few weeks later after shooting yet another person. He was eventually convicted of murder and received a life sentence, though he’ll be released on parole in November 2022.
Miraculously, Amy survived the gunshots, but the trauma put her in a coma. A few weeks later she woke up. Because one of the bullets had gone through her brain stem, her whole body was affected. For weeks she was unable to move, but over time she slowly regained some use of her limbs.
Next came rehab, where she eventually learned how to hold her head up, how to sit up in a wheelchair, and how to communicate by pointing out alphabet letters on a magnetic board. “Remembered to forgive” was the first message she spelled out.
After three years of incremental progress, Amy’s body gave up. She died in the early morning hours of December 26th, 1989, from the injury’s lasting effects on her lungs. Months of breathing through a respirator and then a trach tube had taken its toll. Her lungs gave out on her while she slept.
Two years after Amy’s life-altering injury, a couple of friends organized the first annual Amy Thompson Run to Daylight in her honor. Five miles was chosen as the distance because that’s what Amy would run every day.
Over the years, the Run to Daylight grew to be one of the largest 5-mile races in the U.S., with upwards of 4,000 participants at its peak. It also attracted the region’s top talent. For several years in the 1990s, I remember the lanky Charlie Grey, one of the best middle-distance runners in Missouri history, setting records on the course, with a chase pack not far behind him.
The course winds through leafy South Plaza neighborhoods before finishing near the Loose Park pavilion. There’s always a party at the finish line, and it’s not uncommon to see Chiefs players and other local celebrities there.
Participating in the Amy Thompson Run to Daylight was a family tradition — aunts, uncles, and cousins would run it every year — but for many years, I was noticeably absent from the start line.
In 2000, I went off to college in California and tried to distance myself from my hometown. I kept up with competitive racing as a scholarship runner on the school’s cross country team, but I told myself my Kansas City chapter had ended, so I rarely came back to town.
In 2002, I got expelled from the school I was attending after I was caught operating a fake ID business out of my dorm room. I was off the cross country team, and my competitive running days were seemingly over.
Then I went into a drug-fueled tailspin that lasted for years. I gave up competitive running altogether, and from 2002 to 2016 I didn’t enter a single race.
In 2013, after three months in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center, I began the slow and arduous process to reclaim who I once was. As I pivoted from drug user to runner, I encountered frustrating setbacks from injuries when I pushed my body past its abilities at the time.
By 2017, I was finally ready to race again. Can you guess what my first race back was? That’s right, the Amy Thompson Run to Daylight, then in its 30th year.
My result wasn’t spectacular. I got it done in 45 minutes, a modest time by most measures.
But it hardly mattered. The important thing was that I was back.
I woke early on the morning of May 31st, 2021, ate a bowl of granola, and went into the living room of the two-bedroom apartment my wife, daughter, and I were temporarily living in.
The apartment — right across the street from Loose Park — belonged to my grandpa’s estate, and once housed another aunt, Tricia, after a car wreck left her with a traumatic brain injury requiring around-the-clock care. Tragically, this was the second brain injury in the Thompson family.
I have a morning routine I generally stick to of getting up, meditating for 20 minutes, and then writing three journal pages before anything else happens in the day. On this particular day, the morning pages would have to wait, as I didn’t have much time before the race.
Lighting some Palo Santo to smudge myself down with, I sat in front of my altar and said a quiet prayer.
Amy, this is for you today. Please watch over me, lend your loving support, and help me bring home the win. May I honor your memory with every step I take in this race.
It was a balmy 65 degrees when I arrived at the start line, with overcast conditions and light, misty rain. It reminded me of Portland, my old home. It was my kind of weather.
My coach, local legend Rikki Hacker, was there in the pavilion, near the start line.
“What are you looking to run today?”
I shrugged. “I dunno. Hopefully sub-35?”
I’m a good runner, but I’ve always questioned my abilities. It’s as if my mind doesn’t want to write a check that my body is happy to cash. I play it off when I win a race or nab a new PR, but I know I put in the hard work. I’ve just never been comfortable in the spotlight.
The high school kids Rikki coaches were also there, some of them running the race, others supporting from the sidelines. All the usuals from the local running scene were there, too.
When the gun went off for the start of the race I took off like a bat out of hell, quickly getting out front and following one of the high school kids who was running the 5k.
We pushed up the first rolling hill onto 55th, then Pennsylvania Street and through the surrounding neighborhoods. I kept about 200 meters behind the 5k leaders, knowing I had another 5k lap to run, so I needed to conserve energy.
I passed by my aunt and uncle’s house. They were standing outside on their porch.
“Wait, is that Chris?!” I heard my uncle say.
I smiled and waved.
“It is! GO CHRIS!”
I made a turn down 59th Terrace onto Ward Parkway after coming through the uphill first mile in 5:30. As I ran down Ward Parkway toward mile two, I became aware that I was only a half-mile from where Amy was shot. I thought about that night, the lighthearted fun turned to terror.
It must have been so traumatizing. I’m sorry, Amy. You were taken way too soon. We miss you…we love you.
I kept pushing forward, paying tribute to Amy in the best way I knew how, which still seemed so small, so inconsequential.
As her face fades in my memory — I was five-and-a-half years old when she was shot — I’m increasingly reliant on pictures to remember her. That wide, toothy grin, those curly brown locks, and deep-set brown eyes. She truly was a beautiful woman.
I turned onto 54th Court, an uphill road, still pushing but falling off pace quickly. I wove around walkers and slower runners as I sped up, dropping back down into the mid-5s.
The hill leveled out. I turned down Belleview Avenue to West 52nd Street, then downhill back to the start line at mile three to begin the second and final lap. I glanced down at my watch at the 5k mark: 17:15.
I was in first place, but the second-place runner wasn’t far behind. Gravity carried me downhill as I began the second lap, but I was definitely getting tired.
I asked Amy to run with me, to match me stride for stride, to lend me her strength to keep going.
“He’s still in first place! GOOOO CHRIS!” My uncle yelled as I passed by his house again.
Second place was gaining on me, but I wasn’t going to let him win.
Not on this day.
Still, I struggled to push up the hill on 59th Terrace at barely a 7:00 minutes per mile pace. I could feel myself slipping, growing more unfocused with each step.
Amy, help me make it through this.
I regrouped when the street flattened out onto Ward Parkway, picking up my pace again as I passed 55th Street at mile five. I was in the home stretch, and still a comfortable distance from the second-place runner.
A few high school kids clapped and yelled from the sidelines.
“C’mon Chris, you’ve got this!”
With every step, I could feel the win getting closer. It was all smiles when I turned onto 52nd Street and began my final kick to the finish.
There was just one obstacle left: a slight hill up to the finish line. I sprinted in, giving it all I had left. 34:58, just barely under 35.
I’d won the race.
I hoped Amy was proud of me, wherever she was.
Clenching a banana and bottled water, I walked over to the pavilion where spectators were sitting on park benches to stay out of the drizzling rain.
“How’d you do?” Rikki asked.
“34:58, under 35, like I wanted.”
“You ran under 35 on this course? Nice job, man.”
I’d accomplished what I’d come to do, winning in honor of Amy, Tricia, and all others affected by traumatic brain injuries.
It was the most gratifying win I’d ever had, and on Memorial Day 2022, I’ll toe the line to defend my title and bring home the win, once again, with Amy’s help.
