After a devastating accident, doctors did not know if Megan Cunningham, 24, would walk again, but now the Pacific resident and Eureka High graduate is running in the U.S. Olympic marathon trials Feb. 29 in Atlanta.
On July 11, 2015, Cunningham was with her parents in a truck, hauling their new camper, when the camper swung off the highway in Kansas, causing a crash.
While Cunningham’s mother received minor injuries, her father was paralyzed and Cunningham’s skull was fractured in over 20 places and her neck was broken in four places.
Cunningham said her family had taken the same trip every year since she was born.
“I had been asleep and I woke up because I could kind of feel the truck being jerked back and forth a little bit,” she said. “My mom pressed on the brakes and when she did, the camper swung around the side and when I opened my eyes, I could actually see the camper out my mom’s window.”
A good Samaritan stopped and helped the family, while they waited 20 minutes for emergency responders to arrive.
“I don’t remember anything besides just a loud crash and rolling,” Cunningham said.
Coming back
When the accident occurred, Cunningham had completed her first year as a walk-on with the University of Missouri’s cross country team, and had no intention of giving up her running career. She told everyone she would redshirt her second season (saving a year of eligibility) and come back after that.
“They (the doctors) were just worried about me even being able to move,” she said.
Cunningham was released a week later, mainly because doctors knew she would still be at the hospital with her dad, who was left paralyzed from the chest down.
She returned to school in the fall and attended every team practice just to be with her team.
“Anyone who knows me knows that I’m very stubborn and no one was going to tell me that I wasn’t going to run again,” Cunningham said. “They were just letting me believe whatever I needed to believe to get through it.”
Cunningham did not run for nine months, but six months after the accident she started to bike.
“The first time I sat down to bike, I think I made it probably 60 seconds and I was like, ‘OK, well, that’s it for the day. Like that’s all I can handle.’” she said. “So, it was very slow, very gradual, and then I was finally allowed to run.”
Cunningham said she was not competitive in her first race back, but that didn’t matter to her.
“I ran an absolutely terrible time, but I was smiling the whole way,” she said.
Cunningham’s last college race ended face-down on the track.
“I got tripped and I didn’t finish my last race,” she said. “I kind of never really had the closure that I wanted.”
She graduated in 2018 and started attending Eastern Virginia Medical School.
Cunningham learned about an upcoming 10K race where students could enter for free.
“I woke up and I ran from my house to the starting line and ran this race in 34 minutes, which was only about 40 seconds slower than I had run in college on the track,” she said.
She said the running community saw the results and started to reach out to her. A friend asked Cunningham if she would run the Boston Marathon with her, so Cunningham started to train for long-distance running.
Her time in her first marathon, at Virginia Beach in March 2019, was only six minutes slower than the Olympic trials qualifying time.
“That same day, I decided to register for the Chicago Marathon,” Cunningham said. Her time in that marathon, held last October, was 2 hours, 41 minutes, four minutes faster than the trials qualifying time.
Cunningham has been training on her own, without a coach, for the upcoming trial. She is back home in Pacific, training in the area.
She doesn’t expect a spot on the Olympic team.
“I just want to be able to actually go out and compete,” she said.
But, Cunningham said, at some point, she hopes to make the U.S. team.
“One of my goals is to put on a USA uniform,” she said. “I don’t know what distance that will be, or what kind of event, but that’s definitely one of my goals.”
Her Mizzou coach, Marc Burns, said Cunningham’s story is “amazing.”
“She had ideas of what she was going to do before anybody knew it was possible,” he said.
Burns said he still sends Cunningham encouraging notes after races, telling her to keep running.
Make the team,
get a day off school
Cunningham got her start in running at Geggie Elementary School.
“So, you get to miss a day of school if you make the track team,” she said. “Everybody wants to make the track team.”
She continued running track and cross country at LaSalle Middle School.
“I wasn’t the best, but I was decent,” she said.
In eighth grade, Cunningham said, she got a letter from the Eureka High cross country coach and athletes inviting her to try out for the team.
“When you’re going to a big high school, having that connection, and having all those older girls and a coach say they want you, I knew I wanted to be involved in some way,” she said. “It just seemed to make sense.”
Cunningham finished 11th in the 2012 Class 4 girls state cross country meet, earning her all-state honors in her senior year.
Darrell Lewis, one of Cunningham’s coaches at Eureka High, said she always had drive.
“She was someone who was very dedicated to what she was doing,” he said.
He said he is happy to see Cunningham’s success and he holds her up as an example to girls he coaches.
Cunningham has taken a sabbatical from medical school while training.