After completing the Cary Road Race for the first time in 2000, Marie Grant said, “All I wanted was not to be the last one.”

Now, on the eve of this year’s event, the 83-year-old Grant is ready to compete again, albeit with a different tune.

“I’ll be the one at the end,” Grant said by phone from her Garysburg home last week.

Grant will be among the hundreds expected at Regency Park for the 30th annual Cary Road Race, which begins with the 10K race Saturday morning at 8:30. The 5K race follows at 9:45 and the 1 Mile Fun Run is scheduled for 10:30.

Grant has been in the 5K field seven of the last eight years. In six of those years, she was the oldest person to enter the race as a competitive runner. Last year, at age 82, she was the only octogenarian in the field and she was the oldest participant by 12 years.

“It’s very exciting, and I look forward to it very much,” said Grant, who walked the 3.1 miles last year in 1 hour, 3 minutes and 19 seconds.

Grant was first inspired to enter the race by her son, Dick Reaves. He started running casually at age 35 to stay in shape and never stopped. He has 16 marathons to his credit, including the Boston Marathon twice. This year will be his 24th Cary Road Race. When he entered the 1985 CRR 5K, it was his first competitive race.

“I still enjoy running,” Reaves said. “I’m not that competitive because I’m not going to win. I enjoy the Cary Road Race. It motivates me to do the week-in, week-out running. I played a lot of competitive sports when I was younger. Running is a different atmosphere, at least in the ranks I live in. You encourage your opponents.”

From 1992-2005, Reaves pushed physically handicapped children in the 5K race after running the 10K. He was inspired to do that after coming across Dick and Rick Hoyt at the 1990 Boston Marathon. They are the inspirational father-son tandem who have been competing in marathons and triathlons for more than 20 years. Rick has cerebral palsy, and Dick pushes him in a specialized stroller.

When his mother expressed interest in entering the 2000 CRR for the first time — at age 75 — Reaves never batted an eye.

“My mom doesn’t surprise me,” he said. “As she gets older, I do worry about her a little bit. One year, she went down. She wasn’t injured, she just scared everybody. Her body got ahead of her feet. She’s always been active. She just realized when I started talking about doing 3.1 miles, she thought, ‘I could do that.’”

Grant stays active by walking her two dogs around the family farm outside Roanoke Rapids. She also does water aerobics and a 25-minute stretching routine three times a week.

“I know I have found by staying active, I’m in better shape and I enjoy life a lot more than if I was just a couch potato,” she said.

Grant said she would like to compete in the Cary Road Race through her 90th birthday, perhaps cornering the award for the race’s oldest participant for another seven years. As much as she looks forward to the event, she cannot help but chuckle at the thought of entering the race year after year.

Asked what she would have thought had she been told her in 20s that she’d be competing in road races 60 years later, she said: “I would think they lost their mind. I didn’t know what a road race was then.”

Early on, Grant said she tried to run the course, but her body told her that might not be such a wise idea. So she walks it. She has no designs on winning, but every year she signs up as a 5K competitive runner so she can receive an official time.

“I don’t make any pretense of doing a time thing,” she said. “[One year], the people that were running had run to the turnaround and were on the way back. If they passed me, they were all giving me thumbs up. At first, I didn’t really think they were talking to me. Then I looked around and I was the only one there. I guess I’m a fixture now.”