'A Finish is a Win'

Chrissy St. Hilaire lives her life by a simple saying, one that applies to more than just the Boston Marathon she's been training for:

A finish is a win.

St. Hilaire, a Salem wife and mother of two young boys, has overcome a great deal of adversity to get to this point, where on April 16 she'll be one of hundreds attempting to get that finish, and win.

She grew up in a self-described "alcoholic, abusive home" and smoked for 18 years before she and her husband, Mike, decided to start a family.

They moved to Salem in 2006 and had their first child, Connor. From there, Chrissy reluctantly decided to take up one of her husband's biggest passions, running, in an attempt to live a more healthy lifestyle.

"At first I thought, 'I don't know,'" Chrissy said. "We started slow. It was like, 'Well, let's run from here to there.' Eventually we started to train for triathlons."

But Chrissy started to notice something was wrong. She was losing weight rapidly, dropping 100 pounds in three months during 2007.

A trip to the doctors revealed Chrissy's resting heart rate was 110 and her blood pressure was 190 over 110.

"They ran some tests and found that I had hyperthyroidism," she said.

The training ended, and Chrissy said the condition brought her to the brink of death.

When her thyroid did not respond to treatments, she went in for surgery on the day after Christmas 2008 and had her thyroid removed.

"It was back to the drawing board," she said.

It took about six months after the surgery for Chrissy to start feeling normal again. She started running again and once her hormone levels were in the right place, she and Mike had their second child, Nathan.

Six weeks after Nathan's birth, Chrissy ran a 5k race and began training for her true goal.

"It was always my goal to run a marathon," she said, noting she and Mike are members of the Greater Derry Track Club, which she called a "warm, family community" of runners.

With their support behind her, she ran a half-marathon in 2010 and last October ran her first full marathon, the Smuttynose Rockfest Marathon, in Hampton. She finished in just over six hours.

"She let me run her first marathon with her," said Mike, who is running a 24-hour race himself this July. "We crossed the finish line hand-in-hand."

Over the last few months, Chrissy has been training heavily for the annual Monday run from Hopkinton to ComAve. With two young boys and a part-time job at Market Basket, it isn't always easy to fit in runs, but they make it work based on her family's busy schedule.

Mike said there was even one time where she got up at 3:30 a.m. to get in an 18-mile run because he had to work late the night before.

"It's awesome. I watched her run her first mile," Mike said. "Then it was five miles, then it was 10 miles. Now she's running marathons."

Chrissy is hoping for good weather on Patriots Day (it poured during the Hampton marathon). Mike and the boys will be there to cheer her on. Her goal is to finish in less than 5.5 hours.

But as her motto goes, a finish will be a win for Chrissy.

"If you complete what you've set out to do, it's a win," she said. "No matter what."