Seven runners. One loop at a time. No finish line.

On Saturday, August 8th, seven people will step to a line in Bunketorp — a stretch of forest trail south of Gothenburg, Sweden — and run the Bunketorp Backyard Ultra Trail for Liam.

A backyard ultra has no distance. It has a clock. Every hour, on the hour, you run a 6.7-kilometer loop through the trees and up the hills. Finish inside the hour and you rest for whatever minutes you've earned. Then the horn goes again. And again. And again. You don't run until you reach a finish line — there isn't one. You run until you can't. The last person standing is the only one who finishes.

We think that's the most honest description of this fight anyone has ever handed us.

On September 3, 2016, Liam Mikael Kowal was fifteen months old. He was out for a walk with his aunt when a drunk driver hit them. He never came home. Every second of that was preventable.

In the United States, someone is killed by a drunk driver every 44 minutes. Hold that against the shape of this race: every single time our runners step up for another lap, another family in America has already gotten the phone call. In 2024, that was 11,904 people. Those aren't accidents. They're decisions, made one drink at a time, by people who thought they were fine.

Liam's Life Foundation was founded days after Liam died, by his parents, Marcus and Mishel Kowal. Our mission is to take that number to zero. Your gift on August 8th funds the work that gets us there:

Marcus's speaking program — his story, told in person, to high school students at the exact age when the choice starts getting made. More than 20,000 students so far.
The Liam's Life Pledge — a public promise to never drive impaired, and never let someone else.
Liam's Gift — organ donor registration in Liam's name, so that loss keeps turning into life.
The Empty Seat — a traveling installation that makes an abstract statistic impossible to walk past.
Liam's Law — our ongoing fight to lower the legal BAC limit in California from .08 to .05.

There's something fitting about running this one in Sweden. Marcus is Swedish, and Sweden lowered its legal limit to .02 in 1990 — stricter than what we're still fighting for in California, and it's been that way for thirty-five years. So this isn't a radical idea. It's an overdue one. The rest of the world is already standing where we're asking America to stand.

Here's how you can be part of Saturday.

Pledge per lap. Every hour our runners go back out, your gift goes up. They will run past the point where it stops being fun, because Liam doesn't get to stop, and neither does any other family living inside that 44-minute clock. Or give a flat amount — every dollar goes to the programs above.

Seven people are going to keep going until their bodies quit. Give them a reason it counted.

One loop at a time. Until the number is zero.

liamslife.org | @rememberliamslife | Liam's Life Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

Bunketorp Backyard Ultramarathon

Team Members