Every Memorial Day weekend, more than 5,000 runners come to Burlington for the . It鈥檚 a beloved annual tradition for many families like the Halnons of Lincoln.
Andrea Halnon, an Addison County school teacher, ran the Vermont City Marathon when she turned 50. It was her first marathon. Her daughter Emily Halnon cheered her on, and became inspired to try out long-distance running herself. Emily has since gone on to run more than 20 marathons. She now focuses more on ultrarunning and trail running from her home base in Eugene, Ore.
Andrea Halnon died of a rare uterine cancer in 2020 at the age of 66, but her legacy continues to inspire her daughter. Emily Halnon's debut memoir, "To the Gorge," tells her story of setting out to beat the speed record on the 460-mile Oregon Pacific Crest Trail following her mother's death. It came out last year and was named a USA Today Bestseller. She will speak in Burlington on Saturday .
The following excerpts of Emily Halnon's interview on Vermont Edition have been edited and condensed for clarity.
On her mother, Andrea
"My mom was not a runner for most of my upbringing. In childhood, she wasn't even active. She had a health scare when she was in her mid- to late 40s when she had to have her gallbladder removed, and that really moved her to want to add physical activity to her life. That started with walking, and then that turned into running 5Ks, and then that turned into running her first marathon when she turned 50.
My mom kept doing bigger and bigger things with her own athletic endeavors. When she turned 60 鈥� she loved these milestone years 鈥� she decided to do her first triathlon. At the time, she didn't know how to swim, so she had to learn how to swim. She went to the pool all throughout the Vermont winter, which is not what I want to do during Vermont winters! She went skydiving that same year to celebrate her birthday.
She lived with cancer for 13 months, and she continued to insist on living in her same really wholehearted, bold, brave, beautiful way."
On running across Oregon
"When she did pass away in January 2020, I just felt really moved to want to do something to celebrate my mom and celebrate the way she had lived. And obviously that couldn't be a small thing. It had to be a big Andrea Halnon kind of thing, and running across the state of Oregon and trying to do it faster than anyone else checked all the right boxes for me. Running had been something we shared for years and years and years, and was really a love language between us. It really also gave me a way to stay close to my mom through the hardest stretches of grief."
How running helped her grieve
"Grief is such a physical sensation. I mean, it certainly was for me. I felt like my heart had physically shattered into shards of glass when I lost my mom, and I would get these pounding headaches. Having a way to move with it really helped me work through that really hard stretch of grief.
I love that we're talking about this right before the marathon, because I think we live in a society where we're really not encouraged to be openly talking about our hardest emotions. I had a very traditional cubicle job when my mom was diagnosed, and I had a lot of days where I was running to the bathroom or biting my lip in meetings to hide my emotions. And I think running, especially long distance events, is a space where people aren't really hiding their emotions. They're feeling them in a real, honest way.
If you go watch the marathon 鈥� which everyone should do on Sunday 鈥� if you go to mile 22, you won't see people faking their way through what they're feeling. Running feels like a place where I'm like a snake shedding my skin, and I can just feel my raw emotions."
On the Vermont City Marathon
"Vermont's a place that really embraces community, and I think the Vermont City Marathon is a display of that. The course travels by so many beautiful parts of Burlington along the lakefront. The Taiko drummers on the hill 鈥� I feel like my body still responds to that drum beat in my head of helping you charge up the hardest part of the course.
For my family, it was so special because it was my mom's first marathon, it later was my brother's first marathon, and we all ran bits of it together. One year, I ran the full marathon while my mom and brother ran the relay together. We all got to have a big Halnon party all over the marathon course. I think it's just a really beautiful display of humans doing something really awesome and incredible."
Broadcast live on Tuesday, May 20, 2025, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.
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