“I can honestly say I don’t enjoy running.”

Steve Grasser isn’t putting me on. The story of how this Sequim native went from a self-described “non-athlete” to Boston Marathon qualifier isn’t about a newfound passion. There was no “ah ha!” moment, no heroic race against time or disease, no seeking of some spiritual enlightenment only attained through profound exhaustion.

And while there isn’t much melodrama in it, his story — like many of the 30,000 runners who earn a spot in the nation’s preeminent road race — it’s nonetheless worth noting, hearing how a regular guy came to find himself on the cusp of what many consider a true “bucket list” event.

Grasser is a “goal guy,” a carrot-at-the-end-of-a-stick sort, who looks for something to spur him on to something beyond his cubicle. To put it simply, it started out as a simple thought, leading to another: What if? What if I could run a half-marathon? Do it in under two hours? Could I run a full marathon? Do it under four hours? Where could this take me?

How about Boston?

There wasn’t any trick, Grasser says from his desk at A-M Systems in Carlsborg, where he works as an accountant. He says he didn’t need anything other than some hard work — OK, hours upon hours of hard work — along with some determination and plenty of support.

“I believed,” Grasser said. “(And) I was able to commit the time and the resources.”

On April 17, he’ll join thousands of runners and an estimated half-million spectators in the New England town on Patriots’ Day.

Late start

There’s an old joke about two army guys. The commanding officer asks the private why he’s banging his head against a tree. “Because it feels good when I stop, sir!”

That’s how I’ve felt about running for most of my life. I recall as a youth my father took me to a park that had a one-mile loop and told me to just give it a go, to see if it took. I finished the lap and didn’t run again for a couple of years, unless I was being chased.

But that nagging What if came to me too. It’s the kind of voice that takes weekend runners and builds them up into what they think is a marathoner, and leaves their body at mile 19 pleading in agony. That’s where I was at my first marathon in 2005, scraping my body across the finish line in Portland, Ore. A perfect storm of inexact and spotty training, slipshod nutrition and poor overall planning led to a painful experience that nearly killed my enjoyment of running, and then quixotically, led me to do a second marathon eight years later.

For Steve it did something similar, though his turnaround time (and overall pace, frankly) was much quicker.

Grasser and his family moved to the area about 35 years ago. Though he played a bit of baseball in high school, Grasser says he wasn’t much of an athlete. He started an accounting career, married a local woman (Jana) and now the raise two children — Alisha, a Sequim High junior and Joe, an eighth-grader at Sequim Middle School.

As he got into his late 30s, Grasser starting thinking he could do more than the occasional half-marathon.

What if I could really do a marathon? I mean, do it well? Say, under four hours? If I trained enough and worked the numbers, the math should add up.

That led to the Seattle Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon in 2013.

First steps

“I crashed and burned,” Grasser recalls. “Not even close.”

Racing in under the halfway mark at 1:56, Grasser looked in line to get that four-hour “carrot” but his pace slowed after that, with little left in the tank.

“You think you’re ready,” he says. “I wasn’t prepared.”

He hit the finish line about 20 minutes off his goal. For some runners, that’s where it ends. You put in months of training and it simply doesn’t happen.

Not so for Steve.

“Two weeks after, you think, ‘That wasn’t so bad.’”

The Seattle race only drove Grasser harder into more training. More speed work. More mileage. Better nutrition.

“If I was able to lose five, 10 pounds, that’s a lot easier to carry come mile 20, mile 26,” he says.

Grasser jumped back into training and later in 2013 broke four hours, clocking in at Victoria B.C.’s Goodlife Fitness marathon — his favorite so far — at under 3:52, a near half-hour improvement.

A second marathon turned into a third, and a fourth and a fifth. His times got better and better. As it turns out, this “non-athlete” showed with some hard work, not to be a non-athlete.

Getting his back

The marathon is a bit of a contradiction, in some respects: it’s a monumentally physical act that relies heavily on mental strength. It’s also, as Grasser puts it, quite a “selfish sport” — often, marathoners are training for hours on end on their own — but runners with families rely heavily on a team of supporters. That starts at home.

“I have a fantastic family, fantastic work,” Grasser says. “(Jana) is 100 percent supportive. She never questioned putting the time in. Because it’s six days a week.”

The marathon is also — quite fittingly for Steve — a numbers game. On the trail, the track or the treadmill, marathoners have so much time to think. How many miles do I need to do today? This week? What’s my heart rate? Is my pace good? Should I tweak my stride? What am I eating that I should cut out? If I shave five seconds off my per-mile pace, what does that do to my overall marathon time? How about 10 seconds? 15?

By the time Steve started thinking about Boston — ‘“My friends and family thought it was more realistic than I did,” he says — he had put in hundreds of hours of work and a half-dozen marathons under his belt. Training consisted of three or four days of running and two days mixing in TRX cross training at Anytime Fitness with Kenny Hall, a Sequim High grad.

“It’s great for using different muscles,” Grasser says.

Grasser trimmed his time from 3:51 to 3:38 to 3:34 and, in May 2015, to just under 3:32 at the Tacoma City Marathon, all creeping in on the magic three-hour, 30-minute qualifying time for his age group.

“I thought, ‘I’m close,’” Grasser recalls.

He thought he had a great chance at topping the mark in Victoria, B.C., later that year, but he finished much closer to the four-hour barrier.

“Crash and burn,” he says. “It was a failure, mentally and physically … kind of a reality check.”

Instead of focusing on the numbers so much, Grasser aimed to simply enjoy his next race … even if he doesn’t particularly like running. It worked. In June of 2016 he ran the Vancouver USA Marathon in 3:34.

“To just go and run, that was refreshing,” he says.

Grasser then set his sights on the Tunnel Light Marathon in North Bend, one acclaimed for being one of the top local marathons in which to qualify for Boston. Unique from the very start — the first three miles or so are in a tunnel, Grasser says, hence the name — the race proved to be Grasser’s ticket to Boston. He clocked in at 3:22:02.

Normally that would be well under the Boston qualifying mark, but it had been lowered, Grasser says, to reduce the number of total qualifiers. In the end, the Sequim native earned his spot by about 45 seconds or the time it takes to tie one’s shoes.

Finish line in sight

For Grasser, the finish line at Boston isn’t the goal … and it never really was. Other than a bit of nervousness — not wanting to catch a bug or twist an ankle in the days leading up to race day — he says he’s excited for the trip. There, his family — including his mother, brother and sister — plan to cheer him on to the finish.

Ah, but what’s after Boston?

“Nothing,” Grasser insists. “Boston, that’s it.”

Understandable, for someone who doesn’t enjoy running as a whole.

Grasser says he doesn’t do many shorter races, though he enjoys racing at Port Townsend’s Rhody Run, a 12-kilometer community race, and running with his daughter Alisha.

Also, there is something intrinsically pleasing about watching runners finish, Grasser says.

“If anyone wants to question the human spirit,” he says, watch the end of a marathon race of runners at any pretty much any level. “It’s on display. People are just gritting it out.”

“When you finish, it’s an emotional thing.”