Three California sisters complete half marathons in all 50 states

Three sisters in their 70s found a unique way to connect with each other and their family members — to walk a half marathon in all 50 states.

Back in 2009, Mary Vedborg, a Poway resident of 48 years, embarked with sisters Patty Armstrong, of Carmel Valley in central California, and Ann Penfield, of Truckee, Calif., near Lake Tahoe – on the half marathon mission.

That’s a trek of 13.2 miles in each state.

The first state they walked in was Washington and they finished off with Alaska in July.

“It was amazing,” said Vedborg, 74. “We were thrilled we finally did it. We always looked forward to the trips because besides the walks we really just enjoyed each other’s company and had a really great time.”

And the sisters said their mom would have been really proud of their accomplishment.

When they were children, their mom, Martha McAvoy, would take them on regular walking trips around their hometown in Torrance, during what Veborg called President Kennedy’s “era of vim and vigor.” Sometimes the walks were 20 miles when she was only 10 years old, she recalled.

“She always had us walking all the time when we were kids,” said Vedborg, a retired Poway High School library clerk. “She just believed in being physically fit. Sometimes we couldn’t afford to drive so we would walk. She had really long legs so it was hard to keep up with her.”

The sisters’ lives took different directions over the years but they always remained active. The youngest, Penfield, 72, is an avid skier and backpacker; middle child, Vedborg, keeps fit with water aerobics and yoga; and the eldest, Armstrong, 76, likes to play golf and tennis.

In their later years, the sisters kept in touch but bonded through a shared tragedy when Armstrong was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000 and Vedborg was diagnosed with the cancer two years later. Both were 50 years old at the time of their diagnoses.

“Luckily, we are both strong and healthy and got through it,” Armstrong said.

Not the type to give up hope, the sisters decided after their recovery to raise funds on a three-day walk for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. The 60-mile walk was known as the Avon walk in those days, the sisters said.

That gave them confidence to try the Big Sur walk in 2004. Vedborg’s daughter, Kate McCord, now 45 and living in Poway, joined them on the walk when she was in her early pregnancy.

“We thought if we could walk 20 miles in one day for the Avon walk we could do 21 miles in 6 hours for the Big Sur power walk,” said Armstrong, who taught fourth-graders for 25 years.

After that, the sisters regularly walked in half marathons around Lake Tahoe and then signed up for another Big Sur power walk in 2009. By a stroke of luck — or coincidence — Vedborg spotted a man wearing a long-sleeve shirt that had a map of the United States on it. He told her he was attempting to complete a marathon in every state.

And that was how the sisters got the idea to do their own half marathons in every state.

“We decided, what the heck, we’ll try all 50,” said Penfield, who continues to work part time as an accountant. “It’s been a good way to connect with each other, and by figuring out when to schedule the walks on the calendar, we had the incentive to walk all 50 states. Every year we did a couple of different trips and we probably finished three or more half marathons each year.”

After McCord told her mom, “If you walk in one state every year, you’ll be 110 years old when you finish,” the sisters decided to up their game and walked in four or five states every year until completing their 50th state of Alaska in July.

Since Penfield had lived in Alaska in the late 1970s to early ’80s she gave her sisters a tour of the cities of Fairbanks, Anchorage and Homer and the Denali National Park, which has grizzly bears.

“We’d research and find cool places to go, then we’d seek out the highlights of the state where we were walking,” Penfield said.

Part of the fun was sharing adventures with their family members. Vedborg’s husband, Chris Vedborg, couldn’t walk because of an injury but traveled beside them, and Penfield’s late partner, Jim Delehanty, walked with them in a dozen states. And long-lost cousins reunited with them on walks in New York and Colorado.

Over the years they accumulated photo albums filled with photos of the scenic areas they walked and they stored away special memories.

Vedborg said while they were in upstate New York they came across an old church that her grandparents had converted into a summer vacation home.

“A neighbor said they had a key to the home so they let us in,” she said. “The house was exactly the way it was 50 years ago when my grandmother sold it.”

They discovered that a couple who lived in New Jersey brought their five kids to the house during the summers, and since they spent most of their time outdoors they decided they didn’t need to change the inside of the home at all, Vedborg said.

Armstrong said there was something interesting and different in each state they visited, and the sisters particularly liked trying out the unique foods of each region, from gumbo in the South to lobster in Maine.

“We went to Acadia National Park (in Maine) to spend a few days,” Armstrong said. “One of our early walks was in Cape Cod and that was beautiful. We went to Boston on one trip and Niagara Falls on another trip. Some of the places we went to were really exciting, and there were places some people never get a chance to see.”

Their commitment to walking in all 50 states slowed during the COVID pandemic, but they never thought about quitting. Penfield said they powered through even when it rained, since their trips were scheduled through the Mainly Marathons company, which arranged walks by regions such as the prairie states of Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri.

“It was always an adventure,” Armstrong recalled. “We would do Michigan, Illinois and Iowa together. In Michigan we went through a neat Dutch town that had windmills called Niles, where Dutch people settled. Then we went to Illinois and Iowa where we walked on either side of the Mississippi River.

“In between the two walks we took a river boat ride on the Mississippi River,” she said. “Wherever we would go we would find fun things to do or visit historic places. There was always something entertaining. It was fun.”

Vedborg said it was great to have a shared goal and shared experiences.

“It was a fun thing to do, to get to be with each other and explore the areas,” Vedborg said. “Both my sisters travel more than I do, so for me it was a real treat.”

Now that they’ve completed the walks in all 50 states, they have a new goal.

“We want to go to all the national parks, roughly 63,” Vedborg said. “We’ve been to at least 20 of them already.”

Their next stop: Montana’s Glacier National Park in fall 2025.