BOSTON – Long considered one of the world’s premier marathons, with its notorious Heartbreak Hill, the Boston Marathon officially will get the designation today.

The 110th running of the Boston Marathon begins a two-year odyssey toward crowning the best at the 26.2-mile distance, the start of the World Marathon Majors series that will award points and $1 million in prize money to the world’s top man and woman in races in Boston, London, Berlin, New York, and Chicago.

“The whole point is to be the best runner in the world,” Olympic silver medalist Meb Keflezighi said as he prepared to make his debut in the Boston Marathon and try to take the early lead in a two-year competition for bragging rights – and a $500,000 bonus.

“Monday is the start of two races,” New York City Marathon director Mary Wittenberg said. “One of the races will be over in 2 1/2 hours. The other race – to be the world’s greatest marathoner – won’t be over for 18 months.”

Marathons have a devoted but – compared to leagues like the NFL – relatively small following that prevents the sport from reaping billion-dollar TV deals and more lucrative licensing fees. The splintered structure also leaves the races competing for runners and attention.

So the five races looked to the mainstream sports for a system that will reward athletes for long-term consistency instead of just one day of greatness. The circuit also creates other marketing and promotional opportunities that weren’t available to them when they were just a bunch of different races.

“We feel like we’re at a different level, and we felt we have an obligation to bring the sport into the future,” Boston director Guy Morse said.

In coming up with a point system, organizers of the marathons looked to the grand slams and Triple Crowns in other sports to see how it was done. Of special interest was NASCAR’s new Chase for the Championship, which made a minicircuit out of a yearlong season.

“Our attention ebbs and tides,” Chicago executive race director Carey Pinkowski said. “We looked to the mainstream sports and how they stay in front of the audience.”

But while horses can run three times in five weeks and cars every weekend, humans usually run no more than two marathons a year – one in the spring and one in the fall.

Organizers knew two races wasn’t enough to crown a true champion, so they came up with a two-year cycle, overlapping so that a bonus will be awarded each fall starting in 2007.Runners get 25 points for winning a race, decreasing to 15, 10, 5, and 1 point for fifth place.

“Everything is influenced by the fact that the athletes can’t – and we don’t want to encourage them to – run more,” Morse said.

Figuring out the system was the easy part. A more delicate task was getting the sponsors and shoe companies to put their competition aside and go along.

Several of the races are sponsored, by financial services companies, for example, who are now sharing top billing with their competitors. Shoe companies also have ties to individual races and needed to work together on ideas like uniforms.

“The beauty of our sport is it’s a closeknit community,” Wittenberg said. “It’s like a family, where sometimes you’re better for the rivalries within it. But now we’re at a point where we’re only going to be better together.”

For now, the marathons will fund the bonuses themselves. A title sponsor – and a $1 million top prize – is likely soon.

Among the other changes being discussed are a uniform system that will make it easier to identify individual runners, instead of their shoe sponsors. Organizers are talking about a system that would allow competitors to carry their bib numbers from race to race to make them recognizable and marketable by number, like Derek Jeter’s no. 2 or Dale Earnhardt’s no. 3.

Olympic gold medalist Stefano Baldini would wear a gold jersey, and world record holder Paul Tergat would wear yellow, like the leader does in the Tour de France.

Runners in Boston had already committed before the circuit was put together. Several said they didn’t think it would influence where they run in the future.

But circuit organizers think that might change as the fall of 2007 approaches and a handful of athletes are in the running for the bonus.

“You’re going to see it play out and grow in interest,” Morse said.