Rose Polyakova is a runner. The Shelburne resident favors half-marathons, which to the average fit person seem doable. To challenge herself, she decided to race the 13.1-mile distance in every state. And just for good measure, she’d run the states in the order in which they joined the Union.
Next month, barring injury or an act of God, the 55-year-old ex-banker will hit the finish line at the Maui Oceanfront Half Marathon in Hawaii, which became the 50th state in 1959.
Has she succeeded in her serial state test? Well, not precisely.
“Liberties were taken,” Rose admitted from the parlor of the Heart of the Village Inn, an upscale bed-and-breakfast she owns and operates with her husband, Anatoly — Toly for short.
Fifteen years ago, living in Maryland, Rose didn’t even jog — to her, a run was something you get in a stocking. Then a friend asked her to join her in a half-marathon at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., in 2011. “I wasn’t a runner; I didn’t love Disney,” she said. “But I liked hanging out with my friends.”
Rose finished the race and ran 13 “halves” that year, with little regard to order. “I kind of got hooked,” she conceded. Ya think?
That’s when she decided to get organized. From then on, she stuck to the order of admission for the states, beginning with the 14th, Vermont, and the Mad Marathon in Waitsfield in 2012. “I just fell in love with Vermont,” she said. “We joke that I called Toly at home in Silver Spring, Md., and said, ‘Hey, sell the house. We’re moving to Vermont.’”
The couple, who’d met while Toly was still living in his native Ukraine, moved to Vermont in 2014 and took over the inn the following year.
Pointing at a multicolored U.S. wall map that displays her race progression, Rose said she runs for her health, not for personal best times. She’s more concerned about the costumes she wears than what’s on the digital time display.
“I was a Rockette in New York,” she said. What about her adopted state? “Oh, a friend and I were mad cows because we ran the Mad River half in Waitsfield.”
The original print version of this article was headlined “Rambling Rose”
This article appears in Dec 3-9 2025.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!