Running Out of His Mind

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Jonathan Swiatocha’s Olympic dreams aren’t big enough for him

The last thing Jonathan Swiatocha remembers about that night is hearing Christmas music. At age ten, he sat in the back seat of the family minivan along with his younger brother and baby sister. His family was heading home from a church Christmas production they were involved in that night. The song, “O Holy Night” began to play on the radio - it was the same version of the song they had performed only an hour before. Swiatocha’s mother, Catherine, rolled down the windows, which she often did during the holiday season, and the family began to serenade the other cars at the intersection. It was a sentimental moment that ended prematurely. The light turned green and the minivan lurched forward gently. That’s when Jonathan blacked out.

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A car moving in the other direction at 80 miles per hour ran through the red light and careened into the small Mitsubishi next to the minivan, killing its driver on impact as it crumpled into the Swiatocha family.

Their van arced seven feet in the air before landing on all four wheels a few lanes over. The 19-year-old driver at fault flung his door open and disappeared, but when his father brought him back to the scene of the wreck, police found that his blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit.

Inside the minivan, Catherine’s lung had collapsed under several broken ribs and her hip was shattered, but Jonathan’s injury had a more lasting impact. “It was like a concussion on steroids” he says of the traumatic brain injury he sustained that night.

Though he still suffers from its effects 15 years later, in the days that followed the wreck nobody knew if he would survive.

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Swiatocha was rushed to the hospital in coma and remained that way for three days. When he woke up, he had a splitting migraine headache and couldn’t feel his legs. He looked over to see his dad, Ed, who wasn’t in the vehicle when the accident happened.

Doctors didn’t know if Swiatocha would walk again, and they kept a watchful eye on his recovery until one night in particular. There were no nurses around and his dad stepped out of the room to get a coffee. Swiatocha needed to get to the bathroom, but instead of calling a nurse he had another idea.

“Something inside me was telling me to get out of my bed and walk” he says. “To say I was afraid would be an understatement, but I got my legs out from under the covers and I found myself holding myself up. I took one baby step and then another, and I felt life come back into my legs with every step”. Ed walked back into the room to find his oldest son doing what he thought he’d never be able to do again.

After 12 days in the hospital, he was released to go home and got to spend Christmas with his family. He seemed to be back to normal, but his neurologist warned that there would be some difficulties ahead, especially once he reached his 20s.

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At age 25, Swiatocha’s appearance has the hallmarks of a serious runner. He’s tall and lean with dark hair and piercing blue eyes, and if you spend any amount of time with him you’ll catch him staring into the middle distance trying to capture his thoughts. He’s well spoken. In fact, he’s often invited to share his story in front of student and corporate groups.

A few years after the wreck, he discovered a penchant for running. He was remarkably fast too, even as a preteen. It’s not surprising because running is a family trait, passed down by Ed who had an impressive career as a marathoner. In 1985, Ed won the Dallas Marathon (then known as the White Rock Marathon) in 2:17:42. He also won the same race the following year in 2:22:40. During Jonathan’s freshman year of high school, when his 5k time dipped into the 16-minute range, he started dreaming of one day running in the Olympics, a feat that no other brain-injured American marathoner has done before. That’s when he decided to get serious about running. However, as his running career took off, his home life became tumultuous.

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“I never talked about my injury to anyone. I just kept it in and tried to keep it together until I was about 21 or 22”

Jonathan Swiatocha

After the wreck, his mother’s drinking became worse. “She was a raging alcoholic before the wreck, but it got worse after because she blamed herself for what happened,” he says. “She’s sober now, but my parents grew further apart and I was angry about a lot of things. I didn’t know how to deal with it".

So he ran angry. Bitterness tends to throttle success in running, and Swiatocha pushed against that glass ceiling for years. He worked hard—hard enough to earn a scholarship to a NCAA Division 2 school, but his anger coupled with depression from his brain injury held him back.

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When Swiatocha finally did open up, the glass ceiling disappeared. The more he processed the trauma he went through at such a young age, the more his running improved. He also credits his improvement to his Christian faith, which he found around this time.

Qualifying for the Olympic trials in 2020 began to look like more of a possibility. He began flying through speed workouts—something his dad admits never running leading up to his 2:17:42. “When I was in my prime, I couldn’t do his speed workouts” says Ed. “He’s a lot faster than I was".

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But still, that Olympic Trials qualifying time remains unreached. He has to run a 2:19 to run the trials in Atlanta on February 29, 2020, and he plans to do so without a coach or a sponsor. In his attempts over the last few years, Swiatocha has fallen short, including three aborted efforts in the Dallas Marathon—the race his father won so many years ago. You get the feeling there’s more to his Olympic dreams than simply qualifying for the trials.

When he talks about the Dallas Marathon, he says, “I have unfinished business there” though he isn’t clear on what that business is. He quickly turns the conversation to his father’s 2:17:42 — a mere minute and 18 seconds under the qualifying time for the trials. “His times and accolades are motivation for me” he says. “I want to be better than that. That’s really my goal".

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