“We just kind of laughed,” says Cora, Amy’s 16-year-old daughter. “Because none of us are runners and didn’t actually know what went into it, or whether she was going to follow through.”

Cora Flynn and her younger sister were in the middle of dinner when their mother, Amy — nearing 40, with an athletic history limited to some high school swimming — told them, quite out of the blue, that she’d decided to run a marathon.

Their mother was far from a seasoned runner. Sure, she’d done a little running over the past year, but it had been mostly a way to get out of the house, shed some weight. The first time she’d tried a 5-miler, in a race on Martha’s Vineyard, Amy had been so sore afterward that she couldn’t sit for a week.


Something about the idea of a marathon, though, struck her. She got a 19-week training schedule, figured out how to fit in the runs. Slowly, she fell into a groove, and in 2010, less than a year after the dinner-table proclamation, she accomplished what her daughters hadn’t been sure she could: She completed the Boston Marathon, as a fund-raising participant.

That could have been the end of it, of course — a goal conceived, then achieved.

“But then,” says Cora, “she actually started being fast.”

Indeed. Before long, Amy was running times good enough to qualify for Boston. Around Chelmsford, where Amy and her daughters live, people began recognizing her as the woman who was out at all hours, pounding the pavement.

And before long, another idea formed: Why not try to run a qualifying time for the Boston marathon in each of the 50 states?

Soon, she was completing marathons in Arizona, Mississippi, South Dakota. It became a family affair. A map was hung, with pins in all the states she’d completed, and her daughters — Cora and 13-year-old Megan — would go over it, picking out places they wanted to go. They’d track their mom’s progress, revel in her accomplishments. Sometimes, when they knew she hadn’t gotten her run in for the day, they’d shoo her out the door.


Says Amy, “They’ll be like, ‘Mom, you need to go get your exercise.’”

All the while, Amy kept racking up states, her grand plan becoming less and less far-fetched.

“It kind of became normal,” says Cora, a sophomore at Chelmsford High. “Like, ‘Oh, mom’s running a marathon this weekend.’ ”

Today, just six years after her first marathon, Amy has completed marathons in 30 states — notching a Boston qualifying time in each.

It hasn’t always been glamorous. On average, she runs one or two marathons a month. Sometimes, she’s gone for less than 24 hours, just enough time to fly out, run a quick 26.2, and fly back.

If all goes to plan, she’ll complete her final state – Hawaii – in January 2018.

To her daughters, the most impressive thing is how she’s made it all work. Out the door at 4 a.m., sometimes running 20 miles, back to the house, make the lunches, wake the kids, drive them to school and then head off to one of her two accounting jobs. Then, after work, shuttling the girls and their friends to practices, on errands — a one-woman dynamo.


For Amy, running has been therapeutic. It’s helped her through a divorce, brought her peace, inspired self-respect.

“It always ends up positive,” she says. “And I don’t know how that happens. No matter if it’s cold or snowing, at the end of the run you’re always positive and happy.”

As for the girls, they’ve learned all kinds of things they never thought they would. Where to stand so they can see mom pass by at Mile 10. How many pairs of running shoes a high-mileage runner goes through.

And, not least of all, the wonderful things a person can accomplish if she’s willing to put in the work.

One night last month, Cora fired up her e-mail and — unbeknownst to her mom — rattled off a note to the Boston Globe. In it, she talked about how much her mother has inspired her, how she’s taught her two daughters the value of dedication, how — in her eyes — Amy Flynn was a “super mom.”

“Running empowered my mom,” Cora wrote, “making her the determined, hard working, independent woman that inspires me everyday. Even though I would never dream of running like my mom does, [I’m] very grateful [to] the sport for bringing joy to my mom again.”

Amy read her daughter’s e-mail for this first time this week. She said she wasn’t quite sure what to say.

There’s still work to do, of course — 20 more states to cross off her list. She gets a break this weekend, Mother’s Day weekend, but she’ll be back at it on May 21, in Fargo, N.D., for the Fargo Marathon.


The girls won’t be there for that one — “They don’t really care to see Fargo,” Amy jokes — but they’ll be waiting when she gets back, her two biggest fans, eager to hear all about it.

Dugan Arnett can be reached at dugan.arnett@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @duganarnett.