Liz Puleo has long dreamed of running the Boston Marathon. And this year, she gets to make that dream come true while raising money for an organization she loves: the West Suburban YMCA.

So far, she’s raised over $11,000 dollars to help the Y make its programs accessible to families who couldn’t otherwise afford them.

This will be Puleo’s first marathon. She ran the Hyannis Half Marathon earlier in the year.

“It’s funny thinking about a half marathon as a training run,” she said. She’s run half marathons before, and she never felt like she would be able to keep going after 13.1 miles.

Puleo is excited but also nervous for Monday.

“Some running days are really good ones, and some days are really tough, and I just don’t know how the Marathon will go,” she said.

One advantage of being a Newtonian is that you have easy training access to the hardest part of the course, the Newton hills. Puleo’s been running four times a week since she found out she was the Y’s runner in January.

This year’s significant ice storms have proven a challenge.

“The weather has been really, really tough,” she said. While she’s grateful for the Y providing a place to run inside, it isn’t the same as doing it on asphalt.

Puleo has always been an athlete. She used to play soccer competitively and was on the college soccer team at Catholic University of America in Washington DC. When she transferred to Boston College, she played intramural soccer. But she wasn’t always a runner.

“Running was always a punishment when you played soccer,” she said. However, when she stopped playing, she wanted a way to continue to feel that sense of accomplishment, so she took up running.

“It gives me that sense of purpose and something to focus on. It’s a really nice challenge,” she said.

Attending Boston College also made her want to run the Boston Marathon someday after watching it as a student.

There are two ways to run the Marathon. One is to submit a qualifying time from another race, which is very competitive to get. The other is to run on behalf of a charity, but that’s competitive too, because there’s a limited number of charity bibs.

Puleo applied to be a runner for several local charities last fall, but she was turned down.

“I was okay with that, and I figured it wasn’t my year,” she said.

However, when the person the WSYMCA initially selected was unable to compete, they called Puleo in early January. She was surprised by this.

“I wasn’t in the mindset to do it,” she said.

After thinking about it for a few hours, she called back and said yes.

“I didn’t want to pass this up,” she said.

Because so few people get selected, there’s no guarantee Puleo would get another opportunity. She got a little bit of a late start on training, but as a dedicated runner, she wasn’t starting from nowhere.

“I ran a half marathon in October, so I already had a base,” she said.

Puleo had long been nervous about the fundraising aspect. “I didn’t have the courage to apply,” she said. “The fundraising was initially scary for me, but people have been very generous.”

She hoped to raise $7,500, which she has surpassed.

Puleo is also running in honor of the late Fred Greene, who was her neighbor and was a long-time WSYMCA board member. He died five years ago, and Puleo thought of running in honor of him and the organization he loved.

“They’ve always had a special place in my heart for me and for my family,” she said of the WSYMCA.