AUSTIN, Texas — Kayleigh Williamson has been overcoming the odds since the day she was born. Kayleigh has down syndrome, but that has never stopped her from accomplishing incredible things.

Running has been her outlet to health and happiness. Kayleigh has completed 20 half marathons and finished the full Austin marathon last year.

“I’m yelling back at here, Kayleigh, you’ve got to come on, the finish line’s right there and she didn’t want any part of it,” says Sandy Williamson, Kayleigh’s mother, about finishing the Austin Marathon. “But when she got to the top of the hill, you see her hand come up and that’s the point she was like leave me alone, I see it and she took off running. She did her dance, and we hugged.”

“The moment I see my mom, she just started crying,” Kayleigh says. “Then she told me that I am so proud of you.”

With one full marathon behind her, Kayleigh got an incredible opportunity to run the world’s most famous race, the Boston Marathon.

“I can’t wrap my brain around it. It’s such an iconic race,” says Sandy when we talked to her before the race. “I know I’ll be in tears. I know I will be happy that 26.2 miles are done. But the amount of pride, I don’t think I could put that in words.”

Kayleigh fought through tough conditions and pain throughout the race and finished almost 20 miles. She was wearing bib number 321, which is the chromosome that causes Down syndrome.

A special partnership between Adidas and the Boston Marathon debuted last year, reserving that number for one neurodivergent athlete. That athlete was Kayleigh this year. 

It is no doubt that during that long and trying race, Kayleigh was able to take inspiration from her late grandmother. She says that she senses her grandmother while she’s running.

“My grandma will slap my shoulders and I have to keep going,” says Kayleigh. “Then I got to run fast.”

We first profiled Kayleigh’s incredible accomplishments as a runner back in 2021. Shortly after that story ran, her grandmother became ill, but was able to watch the video of the story.

Kayleigh’s grandmother passed a few weeks later, and it was difficult for Kayleigh to understand. 

“How a down syndrome individual works with death is so different than ours. We learn to live with that hole that’s left in our life. They don’t,” says Sandy. “It’s ever present and so I needed Kayleigh to have hope and those letters from heaven have become her hope.”

Kayleigh takes time to write up special letters to her grandmother, and she gets those letters from heaven in return to help her cope with the loss. 

Kayleigh has inspired so many with her perseverance and the amazing things she’s doing as a runner. 

“To know the difference that you see from when she was born and what we were told to see in another child, look up and say, if she can do this I can do this,” says Sandy. “That’s a legacy.”