Space Marathoner Already a Record-Setter

April 16, 2007 — -- Astronaut Suni Williams is a tall, willowy brunette with a sparkle in her eye that hints at her sense of humor.

She is just the kind of woman you would expect to cut her hair off the first week she was in space, then help shake a balky solar array into place on one of her first spacewalks, and later set a record for most spacewalking time for women -- 22 hours and 2 minutes.

Williams' hometown is Needham, Mass., and she said she always knew she wanted to be an astronaut. First she graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, then racked up 2,700 flight hours in 30 different aircraft before she was selected as an astronaut in 1998. She trained for almost 10 years before her first flight, which launched last December, and became one of the few women spacewalkers.

She isn't shy about her devotion to the Red Sox, and she loves to run, so much so that she figured out how to compete in the Boston Marathon even though --at her very closest -- she is orbiting 200 miles above it.

Williams qualified for the Boston Marathon in January 2006 by placing among the Top 100 in the women's category in the Houston Marathon. She couldn't compete last year because of her training schedule for her shuttle flight, and Expedition 14 on the International Space Station. So she decided to become the first astronaut to compete in the Boston Marathon from space.

Williams is doing it on the treadmill on the space station.

"I've been training for it, and working out for it, " she said in a series of interviews from the space station earlier this month.

Williams planned to start around 10 a.m. today, but may not complete the 26.2 mile course for a few days. The schedule on the space station is pretty busy right now with a crew change in the works. Her Expedition 14 colleagues, Mikhail Tyurin and Michael Lopez Algeria, are getting ready to return to Earth on a Soyuz Friday, while the new Expedition 15 crew adapts to life on the space station.

ABC News has interviewed Williams several times. What has emerged is a portrait of a smart, strong and funny woman who meets each challenge with a smile.