Allie Kieffer believes she can win New York Marathon, if she gets lucky

There are 50,000 life stories in the New York City Marathon and here is one:

Allie Kieffer, the 31-year-old West Islip-raised pro who shocked the running community with a fifth-place finish at last year’s race, is back and not tempering her expectations.

Can she win? “Sure,” she said. “If I get lucky.”

She has navigated through a checkered career with injuries, a brief retirement, and training stops in Colorado, Buffalo and Kenya. Without a coach or a sponsor until last year’s New York breakthrough, she now has a deal with a Seattle-based women’s athletic apparel company and works with elite coach Brad Hudson of Colorado.

“Races,” she said, “are my living. And it is risky.”

She first joined a running club at 5 years old, following her older sister. “We ran for Tic Tacs,” she said. “We sang more songs than we actually ran. But I wanted to be like my sister.”

She ran track and cross country at West Islip High, then at Wake Forest University. “My home life was a little tumultuous, now that I think back on it,” she said. “Running was a little bit therapeutic.”

She qualified for the 2010 Olympic Trials in the 10,000 meters but was forced to skip the event with a stress fracture in her shin. Without specifically training for a 26-mile, 385-yard marathon, she nevertheless won her debut at that distance at the Miami Marathon in 2016. Three months later, she set a world record for an indoor marathon, 2:44:44, at the New York Armory.

An indoor marathon. That meant running for two and three-quarter hours in circles on a 220-yard track — 211 laps. But Kieffer has demonstrated that, if nothing else, she is persistent.

She relocated in Kenya because she knew so many top runners lived and trained in that country’s altitude, and implemented the “live high, train low” routine. Her apartment was at 17,800 feet and she worked out, 45 minutes away, at 7,000 feet.

Back in Colorado, working with Hudson, she lived at 8,200 feet and trained at 5,300, putting in 115 miles a week.

In New York a year ago, Kieffer’s fifth-place finish, in 2:29:39, in some ways was more shocking than the first-place finish by Shalane Flanagan, who became the first American woman to win New York in 40 years. But Flanagan, unlike Kieffer, had been demanding attention by compiling a resume that included winning both the marathon and 10,000 meters in the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials.

For Sunday, Kieffer has said that anything worse than the top five might be a disappointment. Whatever, she will have family and friends along the route, waving foam fingers pleading, “Go Allie Go” and standing behind special Allie Fatheads.