BOSTON -- The Hansons-Brooks Distance Project women's team is now set to make their official Boston debut.

The team's five women -- Desiree Davila, Yolanda Flamino, Dot McMahan, Kelly Stewart, and Melissa White -- will be visiting Boston from Feb. 15 to 17 to train on the traditional Boston Marathon course and to tour the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials route, which consists of multiple loops in Boston's Back Bay and into Cambridge.

Over the past seven years, the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project of Rochester, Mich., has emerged as the pre-eminent marathon training group in the nation. Nowhere was this status more obvious than at the 2006 Boston Marathon, when men from the Hansons program took the city by storm, placing fourth, 10th, 11th, 15th, 18th, 19th and 22nd. The Hansons team was a large part of an American resurgence at last year’s Boston Marathon: a race where five Americans placed among the top 10.

All five Hansons-Brooks women will return in two months to compete in the 2007 Boston Marathon. White (2:39:21 PR), McMahan (2:43:27 PR) and Flamino (2:45:19 PR) have already run U.S. Olympic Team Trials qualifying standards, while Davila, who is debutting, and Stewart (2:58:21 PR) will be attempting to qualify for the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Boston. The women will be competing for overall Boston Marathon prize money and a separate prize money purse for U.S. women.

Accompanying the team to Boston will be Hansons-Brooks co-founders Keith and Kevin Hanson. The brothers, who own a chain of running shoe stores in Michigan, founded the Distance Project in 2000 with the goal of giving something back to the sport. They now own several houses for the team and provide travel, coaching and part-time jobs for 22 athletes.