Marblehead’s Flanagan ‘coming home’ for Boston

BOSTON – Shalane Flanagan has run to a second-place finish in the ING New York City Marathon, won in record-setting fashion at the 2012 US Olympic Marathon Trials and placed 10th in the rain at the marathon in the London Summer Games.Now she’s coming home.Flanagan, a Marblehead High School graduate, will run the 117th Boston Marathon on Patriots Day. On Friday, she joined the rest of the John Hancock elite team for a press conference at the Fairmont Copley Plaza.”What’s funny is (I thought) I would never be a marathoner,” Flanagan marveled. “I was more middle-distance. The marathon was on my bucket list. At the time, I didn’t necessarily have aspirations of being an elite runner.”Flanagan has excelled in both mid-distance and marathon events. She won bronze in the 10,000 meters in the Beijing Summer Games in 2008 before going on to success at the NYC Marathon (2010) and the trials and Olympic marathon in 2012.”London was by far the hardest marathon I’ve ever run,” she said. “The course was arduous, and the weather added another element,” even though, she noted, “I train in Oregon.”Now comes another 26.2 miles on a course with which Bay Staters like herself know quite a bit about.”Oh my gosh, I used to dream of this moment,” she said. “It’s really surreal. It’s so weird.”She added, “I was a little girl just north of here, 10 miles north.”Growing up, she said, she played “a bunch of sports,” including swimming and soccer. Yet, she reflected, “A mile was hard for me in high school. I was not a real distance runner. I was a raw talent, very uncontrolled.”Flanagan did have two resources in her parents – her father Steve Flanagan and her mother Cheryl Treworgy ? both of whom are veteran marathoners, and both of whom have influenced her in different ways.Of her mother, who set a world record in the marathon in 1971, Flanagan said, “She was a pioneer at the time,” adding that “sports bras and running shoes” were “not cool” for women back then.From her father, Flanagan said she received the message “Dare to be Different.””My dad used to say it to me all the time,” she recalled.Come Patriots Day, it will be on her shorts and hat, “everything I’m going to be wearing,” she said.While she said she is “trying to stay away from too much advice,” she added that “I’ve talked to my father, and (coach Jerry Schumacher’s) advice is really good.”Flanagan’s peers, as well as those who have won the marathon before, praised her.”She’s amazing,” training partner and fellow Olympian Kara Goucher said. “She’s the hardest-working woman out there.””I think Shalane’s great,” saluted former champion Joan Benoit Samuelson. “She really wants this one. She’s had some great performances.”Meanwhile, another past champ, Bill Rodgers, noted, “She has an Olympic bronze medal. She’s a great, great competitor. She almost won New York in her first marathon. She could win Boston.”Rodgers said, “Shalane is New England. She has far more of a connection with this race.”It does sound like she has game-planned the marathon going in.”Hopefully I’ll be relaxed for 16 miles,” she said. “Then I’ll start hitting the hills. I (have to) conserve energy. I know I have to die 1,000 deaths.”Asked how her legs felt, she said, “I feel really kind of spunky. I don’t have tired legs right now.”It also seems like the dream she had of running this race is accompanied by an excitement that race day is drawing closer.”I want to win,” she said. “What would I do? Imagining if I won the Boston Marathon, what would you do?”On race day, Flanagan will have a chance to find out the answer to that question.Rich Tenorio can be reached at [email protected].