Freeport’s Kristin Center, 42, tells a fascinating story. Center, a member of the Maine Track Club, has run weekly, without fail, for 11-plus years with her fellow Maine Roasters, a group of friends who take their name of the Yarmouth coffee shop where they meet, every Saturday at 7 a.m. sharp, before hitting the road.

But that’s not what’s enthralling about her narrative. Nor is the simple fact that she ran Monday’s Boston Marathon, her first time competing in the event after 20 years spectating and 30 years of promising herself “someday.” Rather, it’s the long chain of human connections and unnerving coincidences that led up to her winning the opportunity to participate in the race at all.

It’s not easy to get into one of the world’s most famous treks. Center took up running at 6 years old, and began competing at 10. She started talking about running the Beantown 26.2 when she was 12, and pledged to eventually, absolutely join that pack for that distance after watching her dad, Byron Cook, do it when she was 16.

But the qualifying times are extremely tough – 3:45 or better for a woman in Center’s age range – and other means of securing a bib number are limited. Hopeful racers can raise big bucks for worthy causes like the Dana Farber Institute, or can perhaps win entry via lottery or other contest.

Center’s best marathon time, at present, is four hours, two minutes. While she’s been knocking it down by five minutes or so with each practice, she’s obviously still a bit behind the cutoff.

Instead, she ultimately nabbed a spot at the start line by winning an essay contest in Runner’s World magazine. She no longer has her essay; it evaporated into the Internet when she hit “send” on the web form. But it goes something like this:

“I hesitate to even bring it up, because it’s such a faux pas. You’re not supposed to bandit the Boston Marathon,” she said.

Bandit? Banditing means running a race as someone else – taking his or her bib number to gain entry.

Last year, a girlfriend of Kristin’s, stress-fractured her hip and couldn’t run the marathon, so offered Center her bib. “I had my filthy little hands on this number, and for about three weeks was going to run as a different name…I was just thinking, ‘I may never make it on my own merits.’”

Then, however, a second, looser acquaintance – Kate, with whom Kristin has since become quite close – heard through the grapevine that she was planning to bandit. Kate phoned Kristin, urged her not run, afraid she would lose the respect of the Maine running community.

“I was just devastated,” Center says. “Because I hadn’t thought of it that way. So even though my nose was somewhat out of joint, I respectfully thanked her for giving me what she thought. She said, ‘Kristin, you’ll never see your name in the race results; it will always be Amanda’s name.’”

Center decided not to run. “[Kate] was just so convincing. Something told me I needed to listen to her.” Instead, she planned to just go about her yearly ritual, taking up her regular spot on the sidelines.

As mentioned, Kristin has traveled, every year for 20 now, to watch from the sidewalk as the Boston Marathon unfolds. “If I have to work,” she says, “I take the day off.” And every year, she stands in the exact same spot. “I can prove it; I take pictures.”

After Kristin gave back the ill-gotten bib, however, Kate suggested that the Roasters attend the marathon not just as onlookers, but as volunteers working a water stop. They got in, interrupting Center’s yearly ritual and yanking her from her favorite viewing locale.

Which is where things get flabbergasting. “The piece of tar where I stand, every year for 20 years,” Kristin says, “is where Martin Richard was standing.” Martin Richard is, of course, the 8-year-old boy killed in the 2013 marathon bombing.

“If Kate hadn’t made that phone call, I would’ve run the race, and my entire family would’ve been standing where that little boy was standing. That’s my family’s meet-up place; that’s where we stand.”

Center derives profound meaning from the episode. “It’s like God said, ‘Wait a minute, Kristin, I just put something in your pathway so you’re not going to be standing there. And you screwed up my plans, so now I’m going to have to make something else happen to make sure you’re not standing there.’ Literally, literally, literally, the two feet of tar where Martin Richard was standing,” she said.

Kristin was just getting to her car when the bombs went off, last year. “My phone started blowing up; people calling, ‘Are you OK? Please turn on the radio.’ Within half an hour, I had 76 messages.” So she escaped injury, as did everyone she knew who was running. A friend of hers got separated from his wife for roughly six hours, but thankfully that’s the extent to which the tragedy visited harm on her circle.

“There’s a purpose to everything,” she says, “and sometimes listening to reason is better than driving forward with your dream. Because now, I’ve won this contest, and now, everything I sort of sacrificed last year, I get this year. I’m here, I have a number, it’s my name, I earned it. The experience is not tainted, it’s legal.”

Kristin’s dad will be watching this year, just like Kristin watched him 26 years ago. She considers herself a “back of the front pack” competitor. “If you split the race up into the best, the middle and the stragglers, I’m usually hanging onto the back of the good pack. But I always like to see how I’m competing against myself. I want to break four hours. 3:59:59 would be my dream.”

Naturally, Center’s run the Beach to Beacon (three times); she’s also raced up Mt. Washington (“It was terrible. Harder than any marathon I’ve ever done. But it was on my bucket list and I got it done.”) She’s biked and run in triathlons (“I’m not a strong swimmer…I can cannonball like a champion, but that’s where my swimming strengths end.”), competed in Ragnar, a 200-mile relay series, and run marathons in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia.

But it’s Boston that will forever mean the most to her.

Kristin Center runs in a chilly winter road race in preparation for the Boston Marathon.Kristin Center poses with her father, Byron Cook, during last year’s Boston Marathon, where the pair worked as water volunteers, along with other members of the Maine Roasters Coffee running group.