WALLINGFORD - When Justin Bourassa, a 23-year old Wallingford native, crosses the 25th mile marker in April's Boston Marathon, he'll have his eyes peeled for his running "partner," Stanley Perou, a seven-year old cancer victim who Bourassa is running the 26.2 mile race in honor of this year.

"He's a solider; I really am in awe by his attitude towards everything," Bourassa said of Perou, who just finished a two year treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. "He said he would like to run that last mile with me this year, but I told him he'd have to check with his mom first to make sure he's up for it, because a mile is a long way to go."

The 114th running of the Boston Marathon, April 19, will be Bourassa's third consecutive Boston race. He ran the last two to benefit a small charity through Boston College, where he was studying education and English at the time. Bourassa, whose parents and three siblings still reside in Wallingford, now teaches English at Arlington High School in Massachusetts and lives in nearby Brighton, close to the infamous hills of Newtown, a series of four hills that begin at the 16-mile mark and culminate almost five miles later with the notorious Heartbreak Hill.

Bourassa often trains on those hills with other members of the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team, a group of about 500 runners who have pledged to run this year's Boston Marathon in an attempt to raise $4.4 million to fund cancer research at the Dana-Farber institute.

"The opportunity to run for an organization like Dana Farber, that is really actively researching ways to knock out cancer, I couldn't pass that up," Bourassa said, noting that running with other runners from the Dana-Farber team serves as inspiration on days when he might not feel like going for a long run. "It's inspirational to have that many people around you that are all training for the same thing...I've met a lot of cool people with some cool stories."