INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The Boston Marathon will be the next chapter in roughly 30,000 compelling stories when it starts Monday morning. Each of the athletes has logged many hundreds of miles and hours on the road, because qualifying for Boston requires much more than a mere entry fee; it is considered the achievement of a running lifetime.

“It is not something I set out to do at first,” first-time Boston runner Sara Farny told viewers of WISH-TV’s Daybreak.

Farny is from Fishers. She was a recreational runner for many years, keeping her goals simple in her first marathon. “Make sure I can cross the start and the finish line and that was pretty much it!”

Then, as road courses tend to do, her path took a twist.

“Our son got diagnosed with cancer in 2019,” she shared. “Seeing what he got through -all the stuff that he had to go through- I was like, ‘I can do more.’”

In Farny’s case, “more” turned out to be flipping a switch from hobby runner to speedy athlete, inspired by the struggles of her boy as he beat his illness. “(He’s) fantastic. Good. Bigger than me now! And you would never know that he was sick ever at all.”

Farny qualified for Boston with a run of 3:30:53 at the 2022 Monumental Marathon in Indianapolis. Farny says her Boston adventure will include a mix of sightseeing and clockwatching.

“It’s going to be a little bit of both. I mean, I want to do well, so that I can get through it. But at the same time I may be snapping a selfie on Heartbreak Hill!”

Here in Indiana, Farny now offers coaching to other aspiring runners, encouraging them to start by putting an event of any distance on the calendar. She’s particularly enthusiastic about September’s Geist Half, for which she serves as an ambassador.

“They have the 5k, 10k, and the Half. And it’s actually a good preview for Boston, because it’s hilly!”