BOSTON, Mass. — If at first you don’t succeed ...

Butler Township resident Bill Osche, 58, has only been running marathons for five years. Each was the Pittsburgh Marathon on an annual basis.

“I had been trying to qualify for Boston,” Osche admitted. “Any marathon runner wants to get there at some point.

“I didn’t even know if I’d go if I qualified, but my wife said ‘If you make Boston, we’re going.’”

He did. And they went.

The qualifying time for the Boston Marathon in Osche’s age group is three minutes, 40 seconds. He missed that by a whisker at the 2014 Pittsburgh Marathon.

“I missed the cut by 30 seconds,” he recalled. “It was so close.”

Last year, he ran Pittsburgh in 3:36.03 to punch his ticket.

Osche wasn’t so thrilled with his time of 4:19 at Monday’s Boston Marathon. But he cherished the experience.

“The atmosphere was incredible,” he said. “We’re talking 30,000-plus runners, all doing a full marathon. The Pittsburgh Marathon has numbers like that, but a lot of them are doing a half-marathon.

“We took the shuttle bus to Boston Commons, then took a bus to Hopkinton for the start. I arrived there at 8:30 a.m. and my tier group of runners wasn’t released until 10:50.”

Osche passed the time by talking to different people. “I met a guy from England, someone from Shadyside in the Pittsburgh area ... There were all different sorts of people there.”

Osche’s wife, Pam, made the trip with him, but did not run. She was there for support and drove the car home after the race.

Osche said his training regimen “was probably the worst there for a marathon runner.” He would run five or six miles each day after work, then join his Saturday morning running group through Up N’ Running for the longer jaunts.

“We have a team of about 20 of us. We’re called Team Beer,” he said, laughing.

Osche has been running 5k races since age 28. He said some friends talked him into trying the longer events.

“I’m glad they did. This was a challenge,” he said.

Leslie Kramer, 28, of Slippery Rock ran Monday’s Boston Marathon in 3:22.11. There were six runners in the event from Grove City. Evan Avery, 21, turned in the fastest time there at 3:03.27.