Why a Santa Monica kid is taking a hundred miles of Route 66 on foot — and bringing LA with him
By Chris Flight • Race Director, Route 66 Relay • WalkGood LA coach
Every Angeleno has stood at the end of Route 66.
Most of us just didn’t know it.
The sign is on the Santa Monica Pier — “End of the Trail.” I grew up a few blocks from it. I ran past it in cross country at Santa Monica High, mostly to get out of PE. I could have told you the road was famous. I could not have told you a single true thing about it.
In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck calls 66 “the mother road, the road of flight.” In 1939 that meant fleeing — Oklahoma families foreclosed off their farms, everything they owned roped to a truck, driving west on a handbill’s promise that California would be better. They were pointed at us. Los Angeles was the hope at the end of the sentence.
My name is Flight. I know how that sounds. But I didn’t choose this road for a coincidence in my surname. I chose it because of what happened when I was seventeen.
History you stand in
Junior year at Samo, my AP U.S. History class took a trip called Sojourn to the Past through the Deep South. We met John Lewis at Ebenezer Baptist in Atlanta. We stood at Little Rock Central High, where the Little Rock Nine endured inhumane racism to desegregate the school. We stood at the Lorraine Motel, where Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot.
I’ve forgotten most of what I learned in high school. I’ve forgotten none of that — not because the reading was better, but because I was standing where it happened. History you stand in is history you keep.
That is the whole idea behind this race.
A hundred miles, on foot
December 11–13, 2026 — the last weeks of Route 66’s hundredth year — teams of ten will cover roughly a hundred miles of the Mother Road from Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza in Tulsa to Bricktown, Oklahoma City. Ten miles each. One van, one cyclist, a 4 a.m. Saturday start, and most teams home in 13 to 16 hours.
At sixty miles an hour, Route 66 is scenery. At footspeed it is a place.
Runners pass the Rock Café in Stroud, built in 1939 from sandstone left over from the Route 66 roadbed. The Round Barn at Arcadia, bent from green bur oak in 1898. And the Threatt Filling Station at Luther, built around 1915 by Allen Threatt — one of the only Black-owned stops on all 2,448 miles of the road, and one of a very few places where travelers of color were welcome. You will run past it. You will not be able to not see it.
Sunday, we celebrate at the Thunder–Raptors game. Runners on the Jumbotron. Then the city.
Why this is an LA story
The road ends here, and the people I’m bringing are from here.
I’ve been running every day since December 21, 2022 — 1,396 days as of this writing, almost all of them in community. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays with Keep It Run Hundred. Wednesdays and Saturdays with WalkGood LA, where I coach the fast group and we’re deep in the training block for The People’s Pace. Last fall I ran No Shortcuts to Palm Springs with a group of LA runners who held 5:44 pace for the whole thing. That weekend is where this idea started.
LA teams are already in, and I want more. Not for a status finish. This isn’t the gritty, grind-it-out relay. It’s curated like a road trip: small towns, neon on, cafés open, local beds and breakfasts in the quietest week of their year. If you’ve done a half, you’re physically ready. What’s left is the adventure — a weekend on the Mother Road with your people, and the kind of optimism that only comes from saying yes to an experience of a lifetime.
Our hydration partner is Trevi, made by Simple Modern in Moore, Oklahoma. I have contacts at the usual brands. I wanted it to be Oklahoma.
Still heading west
Steinbeck’s line cuts both ways. A century ago people left on this road because they’d run out of options, and there’s nothing romantic about it. But notice which way they were pointed. The road of flight was also a road of hope, and they were headed for Los Angeles.
Our runners go the other way — east, back up the road — none of them fleeing anything. But anyone who has trained for a distance they weren’t sure they could cover knows that running is its own bet on a better version of yourself. That is not a small thing to share with the people who came before.
Come stand in it with us.
Route 66 Relay • December 11–13, 2026 • Tulsa → Oklahoma City Teams of ten • ~100 miles • Everyone can be involved and support, even if you’re not running — drivers, cyclists and crew ride the whole road too Register and assemble your LA team at route66relayrace.com
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