The 43-year-old office manager and mother of four began tinkering with jogging while living in Texas in 1997, running up to 400m-500m at a time.
However, she never took to it seriously, preferring instead to follow her love of walking.
But walking the 62km Stump to Hump event over Tuatapere's Hump Ridge Track three times from 2015 and 2017 and reducing her time from 22hr in 2015 to 14hr in 2017, Clere (nee Sibbald) got to wondering what it would be like to run a marathon.
Having never run anything beyond a recent 29km training run, when asked what prompted her to take on the full course in this year's Dunedin Marathon, Clere was unsure where the idea came from.
"I'm not sure, really. It's just something I always wanted to do. And here I am," she said.
Perhaps inspiration came two years ago when she took part in her first fun run, a 10km out and back run from Dunedin Railway Station to Vauxhall Yacht Club.
She freely admits that at the time 10km was a stretch.
A leg muscle strain curtailed her running midway through last year, and she only started again about November.
"I look back a year ago and I was only running 2km-3km at a time," she said.
She set herself the challenge of running the Three Peaks race in April and, after passing that test, got right into marathon training.
She has mixed in runs with a mix of crossfit classes and yoga.
Once she had committed to running the Dunedin Marathon, she decided to run her first half-marathon at the South Island Half Marathon Championship in Ashburton two weeks ago as part of her build-up.
She was buoyed by her result, completing the course in a respectable 1hr 54min.
Clere admits competing in her first marathon will be all about just finishing.
She is confident of getting to the 30km mark, but has a "we'll see" approach to the final 12km.
But the thought of successfully negotiating the business end of the marathon course, egged on by the support of four children Christopher (23), Rebecca (22), Katy (17) and Carolyn (16), and then finishing inside Forsyth Barr Stadium will be something special.
