''To finish.''
Lloyd, who turns 19 tomorrow, is not concerned some may think she is too young for the distance, and believes she has prepared well since opting out of running the half-marathon section because of a desire to ''challenge'' herself.
She will warm up for the Cadbury-sponsored Dunedin Marathon by running in the national road championships with the Otago junior women's team in Dunedin tomorrow.
Lloyd competed for Leith in Saturday morning athletics. She drifted away from the sport as a teenager, but got bored after a year or so and joined the Hill City-University Club in early 2011.
Success came almost immediately when she won the open women's section of the Barnes cross-country. She later ran the Dunedin half-marathon in 1hr 37min.
''I thought, 'Right, I like this distance', and got right back into it. Now I've done 15 of them.''
Over the past two winters, Lloyd has won junior women's half-marathon titles in Gore, Balclutha and Christchurch, culminating in her first senior women's title in the Balclutha event in June.
She has a best half-marathon time of 1hr 27min 40sec.
For Lloyd, a psychology student at the University of Otago, athletic talent is literally in her blood.
Her mother, Debbie, was a prolific distance runner in Britain before emigrating to New Zealand after completing the London Marathon in 1992 in a respectable time of 3hr 31min. She also had success in road and fell running events.
Debbie Lloyd slotted into the Dunedin running scene when she arrived and quickly earned the respect of her peers, establishing a record for masters women on the challenging Three Peaks race in 1998 with 2hr 36min, a time that was to stand for two years.
She also ran the Rotorua Marathon in 1998 in 3hr 23min.
Emma Lloyd's father, Jim, was also an athlete, running for the Leith club and representing both Otago Boys' High School and Alhambra in rugby.
Another athlete in the family is Emma Lloyd's uncle, Robert Sadler, who finished seventh in the decathlon at the 1978 Commonwealth Games in Edmonton.
Sadler, now a rugby coach in South America, was also a pole vault, high jump and hurdles exponent, with numerous New Zealand and Otago junior and senior titles to his credit.
Lloyd hopes to finish the marathon in 3hr 50min, but her priority is to ''finish in one piece and enjoy it.
"I've done a lot of halfs and I just want to go a bit further. And do it before I'm 20.''
