BOSTON – While a Hopkinton houseful of runners chatted and killed time waiting to make their own race-day memories, Rene Collins sat in a dimly lit room Monday morning and talked about making choices and having choices made for you.

She spoke of anger and frustration. Of family and friends. She talked about her mother. God rest her soul.

She talked about the Boston Marathon, the 26.2-mile footrace she qualified for in 1986, then embraced, then grew to love.

And she talked about next year, and what it’s like (after 14 Patriot’s Day Classics in 15 years), to know you won’t be invited back.

It all hit Collins Monday morning while she rode out to the starting line in a bus. Just like she always does.

“I was thinking about what kind of an honor it is to be here. And how much I’d miss it,” Collins said.

“It was a wonderful ride, but it was so bittersweet,” she said, her voice thickening, growing softer, pausing. “It was.”

It was.

For 15 years, it was. But last fall, after a hard summer of work trying to qualify for a race that is very selective about which marathoners it will allow to make the traditional trot from Hopkinton to downtown Beantown, Collins had to face a hard fact.

“I can’t do it anymore,” she said.

Next year – unless the Boston Athletic Association loosens standards – Collins will have to run 26 miles in 4 hours, 10 minutes in order to earn a starting position. And she knows what the chances are of that happening.

“This year, I’m running Boston as my last Boston,” she said. “Because I’ll never qualify again.”

Despite training like crazy and running in temperatures so cold that she has frostbitten even her eyes (yes, her eye doctor assured her, that is possible), Collins had to face that fact.

So Monday, Collins sat in a dimly lit room. She talked about spirits, and her mother. God rest her soul.

And then she wiped away some tears, headed to the starting line, and went for a run with her mom.

Running as a change

Collins can remember the exact date her life changed for good.

Washington’s Birthday. Nineteen-eighty-one. Another Monday.

She took a TV health test during a PBS special and failed. And then life changed. She changed.

“I thought, I’m ready. I’m ready,” she said.

She was ready to toss a nasty pack-a-day nicotine habit she’d already been fostering for 25 years at the ripe old age of 40.

She was ready to improve. She was ready to run.

The next day, she threw on her “wedgies,” the ones with the 2-inch heels, and went for her first jog.

She rapidly progressed from “jogger” (those are the ones who exercise in wedgies), to full-fledged “runner” (those are the ones who hate the word “jogger”).

And she hasn’t stopped since.

Well, that isn’t entirely true. She did let up once, grudgingly, when her knee rebelled against a regimen of 100-mile weeks.

That didn’t last long. It just cost her one trip to Boston – and changed her life – again.

That was in 1988, when she sat in her Brewer home, angry at the injustice of it all. She stayed home from Boston while her peers headed down to the big race. Her big race.

This, after all, was back when qualifying was an afterthought: Collins was in shape. She was fast. She was improving. And she was mad.

And then her Aunt Hazel called.

“She said, ‘Come quick, your mother’s acting funny. She won’t talk to me,'” Collins said.

Ruth Severance had suffered a stroke.

Early the next morning – Patriot’s Day – Marathon Monday – Collins crawled into a hospital bed, put her head on her mother’s chest, and listened to her final breaths.

“There was no question in my mind at that point: I knew why I was not running,” Collins said.

On Monday, sitting in a dark room, there was no question why she’d returned.

“This is 1988,” she said. “I’m wearing her wedding ring. I’m taking her spirit. [Friend and running partner] Theresa Hainer is gonna pick me up at Heartbreak Hill. [Son] Jon will meet me at Cleveland Circle.”

Collins doesn’t know that her best-laid plans – and those of her friends and family – won’t turn out quite as planned this year.

But she knows why she’s here.

“It’s a run for my mother. For the year I couldn’t run,” she said.

Want some further proof? Collins has it.

“Ten days ago my knee started hurting again,” she said.

Out of the blue. Just like in 1988.

“The body remembers,” she said.

The scarlet letter

In order to compete in Monday’s race, Collins had to do something she found slightly distasteful: She accepted a corporate race number her son, Jon, arranged through his work for a subsidiary of the John Hancock Co., the race’s major sponsor.

For a runner who earned her way into her previous 13 Boston appearances by training hard and racing fast, the pink “V” on the bottom of her bib number – signifying VIP status – was appreciated – but a bit disconcerting.

“This is like a scarlet letter,” she said.

One friend felt she deserved to run.

“She’s got more right than anyone else to be here,” Kevin Dow of Eddington said. “She has worked so hard over the years.”

All Collins knows is this: She appreciates the chance to savor the race one more time. Because the Boston experience offers a sensory smorgasbord for runners competing for the first time – or their 14th.

“I love the little children on the course, who are so eager to offer an orange slice or a glass of water,” she said. “I love the bikers drinking their big plastic cups of beer. I love the music in Framingham, from the roof: The band playing their music.

“I even have an ambivalent relationship with the smells of the frying sausages, because it’s all part of it. I don’t eat sausages, but it’s come to be acquainted with getting to the finish line.”

One more time

Before the race begins, Collins gets a bit of good news from Hainer. Sort of. Maybe.

It turns out that the Boston Athletic Association may reconsider its qualifying times. It seems that older runners may not be given enough additional time to finish the race as they age. The result: Some experts say 70-year-old women are actually running 33 minutes “faster,” or closer to the physiologically perfect, to qualify for the race.

Collins greets the news enthusiastically.

But no matter what, she’ll keep running. And running marathons.

“I don’t go to the theater. I don’t go to cocktail parties. I don’t go to bars. I run,” she said. “It’s what I do.”

And on Monday, she didn’t want to do it alone. She wanted to do it with Theresa. And Jon. And Ruth. Especially Ruth.

As the noon starting time loomed, Collins reluctantly began the half-mile walk toward downtown Hopkinton and the starting line.

“OK. It’s time to go,” she said, seemingly more to convince herself than to say goodbye to others. She paused again. Took a deep breath. And brushed away some more tears.

“I want to soak it all up,” she said, softly, as thousands of other runners filed past.

Twenty minutes later, she gets to the starting line and finds her spot in a numbered “corral.”

“See you at the finish,” she said. “Ruth and I will be there.”

Postscript

Rene Collins’ Boston experience didn’t go exactly as she’d planned.

She didn’t see Hainer – who had planned to run seven miles with her – at their traditional Heartbreak Hill meeting spot.

And son Jon? She didn’t see him at mile 25, either.

But immediately after finishing in 4:53:17, she thought she had that figured out, too.

“I missed Jon. I missed Theresa. I only ran with my mother,” she said, walking gingerly through the finish chute.

“It was the way it was meant to be. That’s all.”