CAPE ELIZABETH – Bill Rodgers isn’t looking to set records anymore, though he’s set plenty in his lifetime.

Rodgers, the former American record holder in the marathon, is best known for his victories in the Boston and the New York City marathons in the late 1970s, winning both races four times between 1975 and 1980. Twice, he broke the American record at Boston with a time of 2:09:55 in 1975 and 2:09:27 in 1979.

He won the 1977 Fukuoka Marathon, making him the only runner ever to hold the championship of all three major marathons at the same time. Rodgers finished 40th in the 1976 Olympic marathon in Montreal. He missed the 1980 Moscow Olympics due to the U.S. boycott over the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union.

Rodgers set the Age-50 record at the Beach to Beacon in the race’s first year by running a 32:55.

“Now I’m 10 minutes slower,” Rodgers said. “I don’t know what’s happened to me in the last 10 years. You just get older, you just slow down a bit.”

This year, though, for the first time since the first Beach to Beacon in 1998, Rodgers will lace ’em up in Cape Elizabeth.

New category

Rodgers will be eligible for the race’s newest age category this year, too.

The Beach to Beacon will offer a seniors division, for runners over 50, in addition to the master’s division, for runners over 40.

“We’re the ultimate youth culture, right?” Rodgers mused. “So it’s really counter-culture, to set something up like this, but it’s a cool thing. Our sport’s always been kind of a different sport, and it’s groundbreaking.”

Tom Ryan, one of the country’s top five over-50 runners, is from Cape Elizabeth. The other four will also be in town to compete this weekend.

“It’s a fantastic idea,” Rodgers said. “It’s a smart move, because it helps keep runners involved who have been involved for a long time. They’ve given so much to our sport.”

Honoring Joan

During the annual pre-race news conference Friday, Beach to Beacon race director Dave McGillivray presented race founder Joan Benoit Samuelson with a token of his appreciation – a vest from the Boston Athletic Association – and nearly started crying while doing so.

“I’ve seen you run a lot,” McGillivray said, addressing Samuelson. “But what I saw this past April out on the (Olympic) trials course, I’ll never, ever forget. It was Lance Armstrong, Michael Jordan, Curt Schilling all in one, out there for 26.2 miles, being cheered on by hundreds of thousands of people, deafening at points … running under 2:50 at age 50. A lot of times, you look at someone’s career and honor them and respect them for what they did in the early years, but as the aging process comes upon us, all of us, we recognize what it’s like to do what the people who are aging with us are doing.

McGillivray also introduced Guy Morse, the executive director of the BAA, who presented Samuelson with a commemorative poster from the Olympic Trials, framed and signed by all of the runners who ran with Samuelson that day.