BANGOR – Sheila Hodges didn’t plan on running. She wasn’t a high school or college athlete who gradually took up the sport after her competitive days ended.

Hodges got into running – a sport she’s been very successful at, by the way – by accident.

“[My husband] went to the police academy and had to come back and run on the weekends, so he got me interested in it,” Hodges said Monday, shortly before she’d been honored for two decades of success on Maine’s roads.

Hodges was 26 back then, and she joined her husband, Chip, on his three-mile training runs. At least, she tried.

“It was horrible,” she said. “Horrible. I was out of breath and just couldn’t keep up with him. I said, ‘How do you do this?’ He said, ‘You learn a pace.’ And I said, ‘What’s a pace?'”

Twenty-one years later, Hodges knows all about pace.

She also knows about running fast. That’s one reason she was inducted into the Bangor Labor Day 5-Miler’s “Five-Mile Club,” a hall of fame for runners who have distinguished themselves during the 40 years the event has been held.

Hodges was honored by race organizers Monday, joining an elite group of Labor Day standouts who have had their numbers retired – and who won’t have to pay an entry fee to the race again.

Hodges earned the honor by winning the race five times in the 1990s – in 1993, ’95, ’96, ’97 and ’99 – and also by making friends at every race she entered.

Local road race veteran Ed Rice, who also organizes the popular Terry Fox Run in addition to helping out on the Labor Day race, said Hodges has a well-deserved reputation among runners.

“She’s one of the really great people in local road racing,” Rice said. “She’s very unpretentious.

“She comes out, gives it her very, very best shot, and is very gracious. She’s someone we all really like,” he said.

During her most successful years, Hodges was a fixture at local road races. Go to an event, and you’d meet up with the smiling, tanned woman with the long, blonde hair. Recently, she has limited her racing schedule considerably.

“I used to do 30 races from June to November, and now it’s probably 12 to 15 races,” she said, pointing out that her family priorities – she and Chip have a 15-year-old son and enjoy spending time at their camp – have resulted in her racing less often.

Hodges said the thing she likes most about running, and the thing that kept her coming back, was the social interaction with the other athletes.

“[They were] just so friendly,” she said. “And you just feel good after [the race]. But mostly, the socializing is so much fun. It’s so much fun meeting everybody, talking about the races.”

But on Monday, as she got ready to receive an honor in front of those same friends, Hodges admitted she had been nervous since Rice called her to inform her of her induction into the Five-Mile Club.

“I was just flustered,” she said. “I was so honored. To run that long, nobody can take that away from you. But I was just flustered. I said, ‘This can’t be happening.’

“But it’s so wonderful that this is happening.”