Antone is in it for the long run

There was a time when a long-distance run for Shelley Antone was a fast break down the basketball court and then a get-back-on-defense sprint back up the floor.

It was a run Antone made regularly during eight years of playing competitive hoops; half of which was spent at Bangor High School, the other half at Springfield College in western Massachusetts.

After college, Antone, a fourth grade teacher at Mary Snow School in Bangor, traded in her high tops for a pair of running shoes and has since taken to the city’s roads in a big way.

On Monday afternoon, she was one of an estimated 9,000 official runners – 91 of whom came from Maine – who ran, jogged, and/or walked the 26.2 miles from Hopkinton, Mass., to downtown Boston in the 97th running of the prestigious Boston Marathon.

“Honestly, I just want to do it to say `I did it,’ ” Antone said Sunday night. “I just want to experience the crowd and everything that’s going on. And, of course, there’s Heartbreak Hill.”

Antone, 25, is no stranger to marathons. She has previously run two: the Washington’s Birthday Marathon in Beltsville, Md., (“I hit the wall at 13 miles,” she said. “That was hell.”) and the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C.

Her personal best time of 3 hours, 33 minutes, 13 seconds in the Marine Corps Marathon qualified her for Boston.

As anxious as Antone was just to run Boston for the experience, she was not disappointed when it was over – four hours and four minutes later.

“It was awesome,” she said on Monday, six hours after starting the race. “It was incredible. I just couldn’t believe the people. It was such a rush.”

The biggest thrill for Antone, who ran the course with her bandit (unofficial) running boyfriend Bob Hutchings, was passing by Wellesley College, an all-women’s institution known for its marathon-day fervor.

Antone called it the biggest thrill that she would most likely remember 10 years from now.

“When we went through Wellesley, we got goose bumps,” she said. “It was incredible, the amount of support. It’s a big party. The noise was deafening. By the time we passed it, our ears were ringing.”

Antone found Heartbreak Hill to be nowhere near as heart-wrenching as its famous name.

“I think it was just its timing in the race,” she said. “It comes at the 20 1/2 (mile) mark. A lot of people were dropping, but we just plugged along. (Late in the race) every hill I ran up, I wondered if that was it.”

Physically, neither Antone nor Hutchings had physical problems that might have caused them to stop.

“The hardest time was at the beginning when it was so crowded,” Antone said. “It took us seven minutes just to get to the starting line and then 15 minutes for the first mile. I think we ran a smart race. We had our lulls, but we just tugged each other along.”

As Antone and thousands upon thousands of others made their way along the route, Cosmas D’neti of Kenya and Olga Markova of Russia were way out front winning the men’s and women’s championships, respectively.

But, the Boston Marathon is not about them, the elite group of runners who travel the distance equivalent of a Bangor-to-Newport run in less than 2 1/2 hours.

The Boston Marathon, and all the tradition behind it, are about the vast majority of runners who run the race just to do it. Just ask Bangor’s Shelley Antone, a woman who did it and is in it for the long run.