Kara, who has a 3.8 grade point average at Tufts, is majoring in political science, and plans to attend law school. She started long-distance running while she was a student at Calhoun High School in Merrick, where she competed for the cross-country and track teams. She is one of four children. Her sister, Meryl, 23, is completing her master’s in social work at Syracuse University. Her twin brothers, Alex and Jason, are in 11th grade.

“Kara has always been my most adventurous child,” Sheri said. “She is an extremely amazing child.”

Kara maintains a tight marathon training schedule at school, running seven to 20 miles six days a week, and bicycling or swimming one day, while also doing an internship as a research assistant at Middlesex Superior Court and acting as a Tufts tour guide. “I’m the queen of time management,” she said with a laugh.

She said she doesn’t consider herself brave because she ran the New York City Marathon a half-year after the Boston bombing. Her mom, she said, is the brave one. “Her job is to sit and wait and make sure everything goes OK,” she said.

New York, she said, “was wonderful. It was nice to be home. It felt like running at home. It was unimaginable to think how many people were running at the same time.”

Jennifer Hahn, a Calhoun social studies teacher, coached Kara there. “She’s a really driven, mature person,” Hahn said. “There’s a streak of independence in her, of being a free thinker. On the track, she was really driven. She had a real love of the sport, of running outside, of the purity of the sport, which is why she has taken to running marathons.”

Kara said she sees running as a catharsis. “Running, for most marathon runners, is a therapy for something,” she said. “It helps people cope. Running, for me, is like my Zen moment. I get to clear my head, and I do feel closer to my father when I’m running.”

Next year she plans to run the Hong Kong Marathon while studying abroad, and in 2015, the Boston Marathon once again, when she is a Tufts senior.