Early this morning, long before many students have woken from their Sunday night slumber, a handful of athletic and determined students will be en route to the starting point of the 109th Annual Boston Marathon.

For these prepared runners, the 26.2-mile event—which includes a quick tour through Wellesley College and a torturous climb up Heartbreak Hill at about the 20th-mile—represents the culmination of months of physically demanding training. The marathon is also an opportunity for some participants to raise money for charities and humanitarian causes.

Today, the Atomic Runners’ Collective (ARC), a group that organizes weekly runs on Saturdays and Sundays all year, has arranged for an 8:30 a.m. bus to deliver runners from both the College and the Business School to the starting location in rural Hopkinton, Mass. According to ARC Marathon Coordinator Eric T. Hoke ’06, the early departure will give the students plenty of time to rest and hydrate before the race begins at noon.

But this morning’s preparations are just the finishing touches to a marathon that truly began months ago, around the new year, when most of the runners interviewed by The Crimson made their decision to run. The students offered many unique reasons for wanting to put their bodies to the test, but a strong recurring theme was support for a charitable cause.

Some of the runners are marathon veterans looking to improve on their past performance.

“I ran it last year when I was a senior in high school and I had a great time,” said Nicholas A. Rizzo ’08, a Mass. native who is hoping to finish in under four hours. He is also a member of the Mass General Marathon Team, which raises money for research on childhood cancer.

Caitlin N. McDonough ’06, another returning marathoner, is also hoping to improve. “Last year it was really hot so my time wasn’t really good, and I wanted to prove I could do a marathon better.” There is also the external motivation of helping the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge raise money for cancer research, she said.

A different charity played a significant role in the decision of Aidan S. Madigan-Curtis ’07, one of the two presidents of Harvard China Care. The organization helps abandoned and impoverished Chinese children through surgeries, promoting awareness of the conditions, and encouraging adoptions.

“Our goal is $30,000, and we are 40% of the way there,” said Madigan-Curtis, who will be running today. “We’re hoping to reach the whole thing and it will be a real push on the day of the marathon.” She said she hopes that the positive hype on the day of the marathon will attract enough donations to reach the fund-raising objective.

For another China Care runner, Megumi R. Gordon ’05, the prospect of being a part of the historic Boston Marathon proved very alluring.

“Ever since I was five I knew about the Boston Marathon because my family is from this area and I would watch it,” Gordon said, adding that she was inspired by the sight of the runners. “This is something I really want to conquer.”

Her commitment was reinforced when she learned she could run to raise money for China Care.

“It just sounded like such a wonderful way to combine something that is individual-oriented and a personal experience with something that is a much bigger, greater cause,” she said.

For Jennifer A. Woo ’06, the cause is more personal. When she was nine months old, Woo was diagnosed with a rare and potentially fatal respiratory disease, Recurrent Respiratory Papillomatosis, which causes tumors to grow in the larynx and trachea and requires numerous surgeries to treat. For the second straight year, she is raising money for the RRP Foundation.

Woo added, “I am running it symbolically for the people who can’t breathe, let alone run a marathon.”