If there is one thing Marie Bartoletti knows, it's how to pace herself.

brightroom.com photo West Jefferson Hills teacher Marie Bartoletti has racked up marathons in each U.S. state Click photo for larger image.

A world of activity seems to follow her, whether she's out running on the roads, teaching her elementary school gym classes, organizing jump-rope fundraisers for heart disease research or baking cookies to bring to the faculty meetings at McClellan Elementary in the West Jefferson Hills School District.

Which is why, after decades of non-stop activity, she has spent a tough few weeks learning how not to be active.

It's a temporary condition, and one that doesn't sit well with Bartoletti, 49, who lives in Finleyville with her husband, Mark.

"The doctor told me to go out to dinner, see movies," she said. "I can't even imagine not teaching."

Bartoletti is more than a marathon runner: In mid-December, she completed the ambitious two-year goal of running a marathon in all 50 states by placing 709th among women at the Honolulu Marathon. Clif Bar, which sponsors a national team of runners who help pace other marathoners through distance races, had just added her to the East Coast squad.

Mile after mile, she has been pretty much injury-free on the roads. But one false step in the most undemanding of circumstances put Bartoletti on crutches.

"I just hit [my right ankle] on the corner of a stoop on Dec. 28. The doctor said, 'Oh, this is bad.'"

Surgeons took part of a tendon from a cadaver to repair a 7-centimeter rupture. She'll wear two different casts the next eight weeks.

"It's made me really sad, and I can't even go to school," said Bartoletti. "I love teaching. This week, I went down and saw my kids when I had to stop at the office and we were all crying."

But planning is her strong suit. Although Bartoletti acknowledges it will be a long recovery, she is focused on the hope that she can be part of the pace team at Cincinnati's Flying Pig Marathon in May.

Pacers are experienced distance runners who guide others to achieve certain times at marathons. When Bartoletti is not helping a group at 4-hour, 20-minute pace, she goes all-out, even if it's her fourth marathon in a month. During one 13-week stretch, she ran 13 marathons, including a Saturday/Sunday weekend in Hartford, Conn., and Chicago.

Some of her durability can be chalked up to genetics. Bartoletti's father, Richard "Tricky Dick" Soisson, was an all-state standout in football and basketball at North Catholic High School. Graduating from North in 1943, he later became a successful football coach in Michigan, where Bartoletti grew up playing football, baseball and basketball with six siblings in the back yard.

"I played all sports in high school, but running? Only when my coaches made me," she said.

She moved to Pittsburgh after college and taught school at Sacred Heart in East Liberty. Twenty-four years ago, a student asked her: "Are you going to run the Great Race?"

She'd never run a mile straight through, but a friend told her that if she could run three in training, she could probably finish the 6.2-mile race. Bartoletti just kept going, running 10K and 5K races, and finally, the Pittsburgh Marathon in 1994.

She ran 4:02 on her first try and figured she'd have to do at least another, if only to break four hours.

Bartoletti has run marathons outside the country as well. She took a break after earning her National Board Certification in teaching and competing in Australia, where a longtime pen pal lives.

"I got to see relatives and friends in all these [distant] states I hadn't seen in years," she said.

She ran a marathon in San Diego with Michael, now 20, and her other son, David, 21. She also competed in an Ironman Triathlon in Florida, and, because she happened to be in the neighborhood, once organized an impromptu pace team for a marathon on Cape Cod.

Of course, she already had a Massachusetts marathon socked away, having run Boston in a personal-best 3:41.

Yet Bartoletti is probably best known for having her picture on a box of Wheaties Energy Crunch cereal in 2002.

"One of my students' parents wrote a 300-word essay in the 'search for everyday champions.' It was for 'outstanding athletic ability and compelling community service.'"

In the process, she was flown to Minneapolis, then New York City, where she was one of six finalists from among 10,000 entries. Having your picture on a box of cereal is nice, she said, but she only has a few left. Better yet, marathon race directors came to recognize her name and would invite her to run or pace, which helped defray travel costs.

Two years of travel cost her less in terms of time or dollars than you might imagine, she said. "A lot of times I would get 'bumped' [on purpose] while flying; I got two free flights going to Nashville, one on the way out, one on the way back."

Although she has collected 95 sick days teaching, Bartoletti prefers to leave after school on Fridays and return Sunday nights.

Perhaps it is the teacher in her, but Bartoletti said what makes her most proud after decades of remarkable running is the chance to pace others.

"I love pacing races. I love helping people. Even in New Orleans last February, I was running my Louisiana race and halfway through, met a girl trying to qualify for Boston ... she was really hurting but I helped pull her through and she made it."

One of her long-ago students -- Ed Koontz of Bethel Park -- recently competed at the Ironman world championships in Hawaii.

"I coached him at Pleasant Hills Middle School. I told him, 'Did I teach you everything you know?'"

Finding balance in life comes from having a balanced makeup, she said. "I got my athletic ability from my dad, but my mother [Rosemary], she was the one always promoting [the idea] to help others."