CAPE ELIZABETH -- Five years ago, Joan Benoit Samuelson looked south for a running partner, inviting a New York City firefighter to accompany her throughout the fifth edition of the Beach to Beacon 10K road race.

This time, she looked north. Jacqueline Gareau will come from Montreal to join Samuelson through the streets of her hometown Saturday for the 10th Beach to Beacon.

Samuelson won the Boston Marathon in 1979 and Gareau in 1980, the year of the Rose Ruiz fiasco, and have remained friends ever since. Gareau frequently spends vacation time in Old Orchard Beach and Kennebunk.

Also expected in Cape Elizabeth will be another marathoner from their heyday, Grete Waitz of Norway, the 1984 Olympic silver medalist the year Samuelson won gold. Because of hamstring trouble, Waitz and her husband Jack will be Samuelson's guests Saturday rather than running in he race.

"It'll sort of be a reunion of the last era of the sport," Samuelson said Tuesday morning while wearing a floppy, green, gardening hat amid the rosa rugosa bushes in front of Portland Head Light. "It's a sport where your biggest competitors can become some of your closest friends."

Samuelson said she would run at Gareau's pace, probably between 7 and 8 minutes per mile, and acknowledge as many fans, volunteers and fellow runners along the way as possible.

"My intent was to never run this race but to be on the other side, to give back," Samuelson said. "But I got talked into it five years ago and here were are again at 10. I don't feel I can race this event, but I guess this is a way for me to run and to be among the runners of the community as well as the runners from away and to take in the spectators and friends who have supported me throughout the years."

A LATE ADDITION to the field is Biddeford native Jeff Gaudette, who will wear bib No. 12, which became available after Ethiopian runner Tekeste Kebede dropped out because of injury.

Gaudette will join his former Brown University classmate Pat Tarpy of Yarmouth and Auburn native Jeff Caron in a category that might be called "Mainers In Exile." Gaudette is a professional runner living in Rochester, Mich.