When Mary Signorelli ran her first marathon in Chicago in 1998, she remembers thinking, "I'd never do another one."
Boy, was she wrong.
When Signorelli crosses the finish line of the L.A. Marathon in Los Angeles on Sunday, she will have completed a marathon in all 50 states and will join her daughter, Stephanie Arango, who is also running Sunday, to become the first mother-daughter duo to run a marathon in all 50 states.
The 50 States Marathon Club has 674 people who have completed a marathon in all 50 states among its 2,740 members, secretary Dave Bell said.
Though the race covers 26 miles, 385 yards, that distance pales in comparison to the ground Signorelli covered to become a runner.
Growing up, she had no interest in athletics.
"I hated gym class," said Signorelli, a 50-year-old from East Greenbush. "I would do anything to avoid gym class."
She was interested in art, and she was smoking three packs of cigarettes a day.
"I never felt good back then," Signorelli said. "I'd be sick all the time, and that's when I was 25."
"I remember (the smoking)," Arango said. "It was terrible."
A turning point came when Signorelli had taken her son Nicholas and Stephanie to go rollerskating.
"I got up to get a napkin and I couldn't even breathe," she said. "I stopped smoking then."
It was still a year or so before she starting running.
Arango, who turns 27 on Sunday and now lives in Cincinnati where she works for General Electric, started training for the Freihofer's Run for Women through a program at Green Meadow Elementary School in Schodack.
"She started running when she was 9," Signorelli said. "I started when she was 10."
That was 1995. Signorelli began racing, running some 5-kilometer races, then a 10K.
"As soon as I did a 10-miler, I wanted to do a marathon," Signorelli said. Sunday's will be her 59th and Arango's 72nd.
Still, the climb to completing a marathon in all 50 states started slowly.
"I'd do two in one year and say, 'That's it. I'm never doing them again.' I hated them at first. Everything hurt, and I was doing them faster than I am now."
Her personal record remains 4 hours, 6 minutes, which she did in her first race in Chicago. She generally runs about five hours now.
It was on a trip with her daughter to do a marathon in New Hampshire that the idea of doing a marathon in every state took hold.
Arango, who has a personal record of 3:20 in the marathon, was running a race in New Hampshire on a Saturday and in Maine on a Sunday. Signorelli decided to run New Hampshire and help with the driving to Maine and back to the airport after the race.
"On the way back to the airport, she talked me into doing everything," Signorelli said. "She was going to do it, so I might as well."
Arango, who played several sports at Columbia High School and competed in lacrosse and rugby at Union College, finished her 50-states quest at the Boston Marathon last April.
"When my daughter finished Boston, she was quiet, then she burst out crying," Signorelli said. "I said, 'I'm not going to be like that.' Now I can't even think about (completing 50 states) because I get emotional."
"She's going to bawl her eyes out," Arango predicted. "She cries at supermarket openings. You're so focused on this goal for so long. When it's over, it kind of hits you. It's kind of sad."
Completing the task will be another shared experience for this incredibly close mother and daughter.
"When she moved out there (to Ohio), I said, 'I'm not ever going to see her.' I could fly out there once in a while, but when she started (running marathons), I thought 'She can't run marathons by herself. I have to be there in case something happens.' Now we see each other a lot more than people who live in the same town."
"She just wants to hang out with me," Arango jokes about her and her mom's frequent adventures. "Living so far from home, I didn't know anyone (in Cincinnati). Still, I've never been homesick because of (the races)."
Arango -- who once completed the New York City Marathon with a torn muscle in her foot, used crutches for a week, then put them down to run another marathon -- said she and her mom also go shopping, watch football games and go sightseeing when they go to a race. Signorelli owns her own small business and Arango limits her trips to the weekends or an occasional vacation day at GE, and both can do work on their laptops when on a trip, making the quest possible.
Now that their drive to run a marathon in all 50 states will be complete, will they be spending less time together?
"Stephanie has started doing triathlons," Signorelli said. "So I said, 'Why don't we do this. I'll do the marathon and you do the triathlon."
There's an event in Okoboji, Iowa, in July that they are targeting that has both.
So far Signorelli has resisted any urge to try a triathlon.
"I'm worried that I'd start to like it," she said.
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