Marathon legend Joan Benoit Samuelson is to race in Bermuda 35 years after she completed the first marathon of her career on the Island’s roads.

Invited back as a special guest of the Bermuda Marathon Weekend, the first women’s Olympic Marathon champion intends to pull on her racing shoes and once again take part in the festival of running.

It was in Bermuda that she got a taste for the marathon distance as the second woman to finish in the Island’s 1979 international event despite initially not intending to run the full race.

She wanted a “recovery run” after her 10K victory the previous day in the Bermuda Marathon Weekend, but ended up completing the 26.2-mile distance for the first time.

Five years later, she made history by winning the inaugural women’s Olympic marathon in Los Angeles.

Next week the American is returning to the Island for the first time in 30 years to take part in a pre-Bermuda Marathon Weekend question-and-answer session at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess next Thursday, when there will be also a free screening of the film There Is No Finishing Line.

“I’m looking forward to coming back to Bermuda and meeting old friends and new ones,” she said.

Her last visit was in 1984, while on honeymoon with her husband Scott.

In last year’s Boston Marathon, she won her age division in an impressive time of two hours, 50 minutes and 29 seconds. While in Bermuda she is considering competing in the Bermuda Marathon Weekend’s half-marathon, although she is also intrigued by the three-race Bermuda Triangle Challenge.

Recalling her 1979 visit to the Island, she said: “It was a big trip for me. I felt like I was going to the tropics.”

At the time she was a college student and part of a Nike running team that decided to make Bermuda a “destination trip” to compete in the January races and enjoy some warm weather training.

Also in the Nike group was Julie Shea, a team-mate of Benoit Samuelson from North Carolina State University. The pair took part in the 10K race and it was Benoit Samuelson who emerged victorious, becoming the first women’s winner in the event.

“I did not expect to beat Julie because she usually beat me,” she said.

Her winning time was 34:19.

“The following day, I think Julie was out to prove a point and she suggested we do the marathon. I was pretty wiped out from the 10K and only wanted a recovery run.”

Benoit Samuelson decided to run with a group that included the men’s 10K champion Craig Virgin, intending to cover only half the marathon route before calling it a day and getting a ride in the race pick-up vehicle.

But that plan changed when, at the midway point on the 26.2-mile course, a race marshall told them that the pick-up van would not be coming along until the last of the marathoners had gone through.

“So we decided it would be quicker to continue running to the finish line.”

Team-mate Shea took the women’s race crown in 2:46:42. Benoit Samuelson, who had never run beyond 22 miles, finished second in 2:50:54.

Afterwards Shea told The Royal Gazette: “I don’t think I’ll be concentrating on the marathon because they don’t have it for women in the Olympics. I’ll stick with trying to be a miler.”

In contrast, Benoit Samuelson said: “This won’t be my last marathon.”

She was first woman in the Boston Marathon later that year and set a world record of 2:22:43 as first woman in the 1983 Boston race.

Despite being injured early in 1984, she qualified for the United States Olympic team and went on to win the inaugural women’s Olympic Marathon that summer in Los Angeles. “It was like living a dream,” she said.

In recent years Benoit Samuelson, 56, has set some of the fastest women’s marathon times in the 50-plus age division, including a US age category record of 2:47:50 in the 2010 Chicago Marathon.

n See The Royal Gazette’s Bermuda Marathon Weekend special supplement in next Wednesday’s newspaper to read more about Benoit Samuelson’s Olympic Games memories and her friendship with Norway’s great marathoner Grete Waitz.

n To book tickets for the free screening of ‘There Is No Finishing Line’ at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess next Thursday at 6.30pm, where Benoit Samuelson will also speak, send an e-mail to: bnaa@logic.bm or call 296-0951.

n This month’s Bermuda Marathon Weekend runs from January 17 to 19.