After 7 hours, 4 seconds, Lewis, 50, finally reached the finish line, completing a 26.2-mile trek over a hellish, hilly terrain.

Wearing No. 1118, she was officially the last participant to return.

"Stick a fork in me," Lewis said. "I'm done."

She made it in a little over the seven hours allotted by race officials, walking the entire way at an average of about 16 minutes per mile.

Her feet swollen in her sneakers, awaiting a well-deserved soak, Lewis found enough energy to stand at the finish line and celebrate. She raised her hands to the sky, proud to have slogged through her 24th marathon in six years.

Lewis, 50, seemed not to care that the finishing area held considerably fewer people than when she started the race at 7 a.m. A few bystanders clapped and shouted congratulations, among them her friends and training buddies Annette Joyce and Susan Spence, but no one held signs like others had a few hours before.

By the time Lewis arrived, it was 2 p.m. and the parking lot had emptied. The streets had reopened.

But the English teacher from Pfafftown, a community in Forsyth County, didn't seem to notice that race officials were packing supplies and tearing down the course behind her.

She never even looked back to check her time on the clock at the finish line.

What for? She had finished.

Mind power

"I told myself, 'If you finish, that's what matters,'" Lewis said. "I didn't want to give up. I never want to give up. I always tell myself, 'Keep going.'"

She kept going even when the hills on Sunday's course appeared insurmountable.

"Some of those hills helped me find my religion again," she said, "because I sure had to pray to get over some of them."

Completing a marathon is mind-boggling to some. Taking seven hours to complete the feat is on a whole different level.

"Your mind has to be a little warped to wrap around it," Lewis said.

Moving forward

She said she started walking to soothe a part of herself that was bruised when she divorced from her long-time husband.

Putting one foot in front of the other, she said, came to symbolize what she needed to do in moving on with her life.

So walking for exercise became walking for a challenge. And there are few harder personal challenges than a marathon.

Lewis took it a step further, challenging herself to complete 25 marathons by her 50th birthday. Sunday's race was her 24th since her 46th birthday.

She turned 50 in June and has one more to go.

The next race, possibly her last, will be in Jacksonville, Fla., where she plans to dedicate the race to a friend who has cancer.

Lewis said she started training in August for Sunday's event, walking several times a week.

During the race, she said, she never felt sick, only tired from the grind. She ate a few orange slices and gummy bears, supplies she packs for all races.

Proper mental preparation, she said, is more important to overcome the physical challenge of a marathon.

She breaks the race down by miles, giving herself pep talks along the way. At about the 18th mile marker, she hits a wall.

Lewis said she always studies the course map because it usually shows a point where the course turns back toward the starting line.

"I look for the turn," she said. "because I know when I make that turn, I'm headed toward the finish line."

Exhausted at the end of her race, she didn't have any plans of missing work today. Students in her North Forsyth High School classes should not expect a substitute.

"I'll be there at 7:45 a.m.," she said."They need to be ready to go because they've got to keep up with me."

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