A family in Cape Elizabeth is the No. 1 reason Alexi Pappas keeps returning to Maine every year to participate in the annual TD Beach to Beacon 10K Road Race, this year celebrating its 18th edition.

Pappas will arrive in Maine on Thursday evening to participate for the third time in the Beach to Beacon, set for Saturday in Cape Elizabeth. It features 6,400 racers from around the world. This weekend will mark her third time staying with Cape Elizabeth resident Lisa Leighton and her family during the event.

“The Leightons, they have two kids, and every year their daughter, Laura, gives up her bedroom for me to stay,” said Pappas, from Eugene, Ore. “They come and watch the race, and we have dinner together after. I feel very lucky to be able to stay with them. They are down-to-earth people.”

“It’s a really special race to me for a number of reasons, one of them being that the founder is a huge role model of mine,” said Pappas, 25, referring to running legend Joan Benoit Samuelson, who grew up in Cape and lives in Freeport.

“It’s a unique race in that there are host families,” Pappas added. “I have really gotten to know the Leightons over the years. Maine isn’t my home, but they make me feel so welcome.”

Leighton, whose family also hosted a Kenyan athlete four years ago, enjoys the athlete-hosting program because she gets to know the runners personally and learn more about the sport.

“The biggest part of hosting is getting people where they need to be, settled, and into their pre-race routine,” said Leighton. “The experience is very different, depending on where your athlete is coming from.”

According to Leighton, hosting an athlete gives local families a “behind-the-scenes look” at how athletes train for the 10K, including what they eat and how they prepare their bodies.

Every year the family members stand in the same area along the race course to cheer on Pappas, including in front of the Pond Cove Shopping Center on Ocean House Road, the race’s halfway point, and at the finish line in front of Portland Head Light at Fort Williams Park.

“It’s the most special part,” said Pappas. “When I pass the Leightons on the course, and I see little Matthew and Laura cheering, and Chip and Lisa, it’s like seeing my own family.”

The Beach to Beacon is important to Pappas because it was the first – and her fastest – 10K road race she had ever participated in. Pappas, a five-time All-American at Dartmouth College and Oregon, made her professional road racing debut at the 2013 race, finishing 10th among women in a then-personal best of 32:55. In 2014, she placed seventh in a time of 32:31.

“It was my introduction to the world of distance running,” said Pappas, who runs professionally for the Nike-sponsored Oregon Track Club Elite in Eugene. “It has a very special place in my heart as a race.”

An annual tradition for Pappas and the Leightons is going to Scratch Baking Co. in South Portland the day before the race to get cookies. After the race, she also jogs down the road to Jordan Farm in Cape Elizabeth to pick out some vegetables and chat with the farm owner. She also has fond memories of time with the Leightons at the post-Beach to Beacon lobster bake.

“There are little parts of Cape Elizabeth that I have grown very familiar with,” Pappas said. “I had no connection to Maine at all before the Beach to Beacon, and now I feel a strong connection to the place and people there.”

The host family program is overseen by Cape resident Kathy Tarpo. She said there are about two-dozen runners hosted by local families in Cape and South Portland. This year, there are 23 families, including her own, participating in the program, and some of them host two athletes at a time.

“They (arrive) on Thursday, and host families have them through Sunday,” Tarpo said. “Usually they show them the course, if they don’t know it, and feed them. The tricky part is finding out what the runners’ pre-race rituals and foods are. Saturday morning, we get them to the race early, and many of the host families – if not all – sit at the finish line.”

When you ask Bob Harrison, also of Cape Elizabeth, about some of the world’s most talented distance runners he has invited into his home, he could go on about his experience for days.

Since 1998, Harrison has hosted several elite African athletes, including Joseph Kimani, 2000 Beach to Beacon champion with a time of 28:07, who died in 2012 at age 40 from complications of pneumonia.

“For the most part we have (hosted) Kenyan men, who are citizens of Kenya but run internationally, and for the last two or three years, we’ve had Ethiopians,” said Harrison.

An interesting pattern that Harrison has noticed with his male Kenyan athletes is that they tend to spend their Beach to Beacon prize money in their local economy. Kimani purchased a burglar alarm system to monitor his small tea plantation, and also used his earnings to build a high-altitude training dorm for runners, said Harrison.

Each time Harrison hosts a Kenyan runner, he asks them what they plan to do with their Beach to Beacon prize money, and every year, he’s blown away by their response.

“I cannot cite a Kenyan male runner who would deviate from that pattern, and we’ve explored it with all of them,” Harrison said.

This weekend, Harrison expects to host two Ethiopian runners whose names he doesn’t recognize – but nevertheless, he is looking forward to his 15th year of hosting top-notch athletes. He says he would recommend the host program to other local residents who don’t necessarily want to run in the race, but take part in Beach to Beacon in a meaningful way.

“It gives kids, especially, and adults a window out of their world, into the rest of the world, that is very, very difficult to get any other way, in your own home,” said Harrison. “Usually, to get this experience you have to travel yourself.”

Bob Harrison’s family, from left, wife Dale, son Kevin, daughter Leslie, and Bob stand in front of their Cape Elizabeth home with John Kagwe, one of several African athletes that the family has hosted since 1998 during the Beach to Beacon 10K Road Race. The Leighton family from Cape Elizabeth, from left, Lisa and her husband Chip, enjoy lobster with third-year Beach to Beacon runner Alexi Pappas, from Eugene, Ore., during the Beach to Beacon lobster bake in 2013. Courtesy photos