Boston Bombing – My Story

I have been asked about this day so many times so I thought I would put it to paper.

A beautiful day for a run!  My nerves always get the best of me on marathon day, but so much more for the Boston Marathon. It is a day full of excitement and terror all rolled up into one giant ball of nerves!  The day starts out quite early waking up in the hotel at 5:00am (although I did not really sleep much anyway from all the anxiety)! I have my breakfast regime all set in the hotel with a bagel, peanut butter, and the hotel coffee. I have my marathon clothes laid out and on this day luckily no coats, gloves or extras needed and trust me I have had those race days when I cannot seem to bundle up enough only to take it all off later as the day warms up.  I have my throw away clothes that I bought at the goodwill to keep me warm since we have to wait in line for the bus, take an hour ride out to the beginning of the race only to sit around for another hour or so until our numbers are called to walk a daunting mile to the start and find our corral with our matching bib number to stand and wait for about another 10-15 minutes.  All this time I am trying to drink but not drink too much (don’t want to have to go the bathroom during the race), eat but not eat too much, and also thinking about my pace and what I need to accomplish through these next few hours.

Finally, the time has come and the gun goes off, the large crowd all around me starts to move little by little towards that start line, then my watch turns on and off I go with my feet feeling light and my body feeling good as I bounce along with the crowd trying to find my path through the daunting sea of runners so I can run my pace.  I dodge in and out of the runners going side by side for a few miles until the crowd starts to thin out enough for me to have a good place to run although the entire race is a little bit of a dodge game. Finally, all that anxiety and stress starts to fall off and I turn on my music and just run my pace and my race. Boston has that special feel to it as you run through every small town full of cheering crowds out having a fun day on this Boston holiday, Patriot’s Day!  There are crowds of people in a backyard having a BBQ, there are groups of people on the side cheering on their family member or friend, there are bands playing music on the side of the road, and there are small children holding out their hands hoping a runner will come by and give them a hi-five!  The day is sunny and the perfect weather for a marathon!  I go through mile 8, 9, and so on feeling great! I am coming up the halfway mark of 13.1 miles and I hear a massive crowd yelling just up ahead. I am coming up on the Wellesley girl’s college where it seems every girl in the school is out jumping up and down with their signs, “kiss me, I am from Texas”. “kiss me for good luck!”, and so many more! I must be careful as some of the runners will cross my pathway just to get over to the girls! The crowd of cheering girls and their signs make my tired feet feel a little better and puts a smile on my face as my body has started to become tired.  As I keep going and my body is feeling the miles, I then reach what they call Heartbreak Hill – which is not one hill but a series of hills, so the name is a little deceiving!  Once again, the crowds are thick on the top of each hill to let you know you have conquered that hill only to move onto the next one.  I have to say these hills kind of have been my breaking point for this marathon as this is when I seem to crash and burn and want to stop and walk!  On this day and this marathon I have to say I was able to push through and suffer through the last of the 26.2 miles (this isn’t to say I didn’t walk a few seconds at the last couple water stations)! My goal was only to qualify for the next Boston Marathon and at this time I needed to have a 3:55 (3 hours and 55 minutes) and finished with a 3:47:20 so I did it!!  It is such an extreme feeling coming around the corner and running towards that finish line on Boylston Street! The crowds are so thick and so loud that of course I have my music off and just play off the crowd to keep one foot in front of the other maybe even running a little bit faster towards that giant finish in blue in gold painted across the street for you to see hundreds of feet away as you descend upon it and smile for the camera above you, I did it!!

Oh my gosh, I am exhausted, I just ran 26.2 miles! 🙂 Now comes the assembly line, a drone of zombies walking ever so slowly as the volunteers guide us where we need to go, we get our water handed to us, our Gatorade, and they wrap us in foil to keep us warm after getting all sweaty and the air hits you and you are suddenly frozen. We keep walking ever so slowly as we get our plastic bag of dry food (bagel, chips, whatever), nothing really sounds good right now. Finally! The one thing you came for in the first place, your medal!

They hang that shiny blue and yellow circle around your neck, and you can finally feel a smile coming on.  I now have to walk the line of busses until I can get my bag of dry clothes and find a tent full of naked runners to join and peel off the sweaty, smelly clothes and move very cautiously to put the dry clothes on as every muscle is aching and yelling at me to stop moving! Finally, I am fully clothed and can leave this huddle of smelly runners to fresh air and go see a few runners coming into the finish and watch as they smile for the camera!

As I stand near the finish and drink my Gatorade and smile watching runner after runner cross that finish line, I feel the ground shake underneath my feet and see a giant cloud of dust erupts near the crowd and then another loud explosion.  Wow, is someone lighting off fireworks? As if you are driving by an accident, you have to get closer to see what is going on, but as I try to get closer I am shoved this way and that way by a stampede of people running my way, what is happening?  The crowd has descended on the race and taken over the race path to the finish, how can the runners get through?  The media and staff that sit high above the crowd are plummeting down the steps and the med tent is basically throwing runners out to stand on their own two feet, what??  I think my feet are frozen to the ground as I glance through the crowd and wonder if my eyes are deceiving me as I see pools of blood on the side where the crowd once was and hear people screaming, “bomb, it was a bomb”!  Did I hear someone say that is a leg? Oh my god, is this happening?  My mind is not interpreting the reality happening around me and my feet cannot seem to move. I can hear sirens from the side slowly gaining strength and becoming louder, yet I still am unable to move.  Large arms wrap around me from behind and my feet are lifted off the ground and I am now moving away from the crowd and away from that finish line.

As I slowly come back into reality, I turn around to see a gentlemen in a uniform (National Guard) that has placed me into what I assume is a safe place and asks if I am okay.  I can only seem to nod my head yes as he runs off into the crowd to help more frightened people like myself.  I slowly walk into Boston Commons, the beautiful park in the middle of downtown Boston where other runners and spectators are strewn all over looking for family or friends.  I am here with friends, no family and I have no idea where anyone is at; wait I have my phone and I pull it out to try and call someone, anyone, but it is not working. I dial and dial again to no avail.  People are coming out of their homes to offer help to the runners; food, water, or just a warm place to sit. As I wander through the park trying to figure out where I need to go, I run into a very young runner who did not have the luxury to get her warm clothes (the weather has gotten a bit cooler) as she is huddled on a park bench in her foil cape, crying.  I ask to sit by her, and she tells me they have removed the family meeting area and she has no idea how to find her family.  I spot a Starbucks across the way and ask her if she would like to go and have a coffee to warm up, she said that would be wonderful but has no money with her, but I do! We make our away across the park only to be met with a closed sign.  Everything around us is closing very quickly.  As we are making our way back to the park bench another gentleman in uniform with a loud bullhorn announces to all if they were to meet family, to follow him.  As we both have tears streaming down our face, we hug and tell each other good luck and be safe! I wish I could remember that sweet young girl’s name as I may have wanted to help her but she helped me if only to have a friendly person to sit with for a short while through the chaos happening all around us.

I feel like time dragged on for hours as I kept trying my phone to reach someone, anyone. Suddenly, my phone rang, it was working!!  It was my daughter who was sitting in class as her friends one after another text her to see if her mom was okay.  She did not know what was happening.  She had been trying to call and I only knew it was her by caller-id as she was sobbing on the phone.  I explained to her she was talking to me and I was okay and incredibly happy to hear her voice.  I calmed her down and got off the phone only to have my phone blow up with calls, text, etc.  I did not want my phone to die before I could make a call to get somewhere so I quickly called a fellow runner I was staying with only to breakdown and cry at the sound of his voice. He (being a guy) hands the phone to another friend (a girl) to talk with me.  I have no idea how to get to the hotel and she calmly guides me to an intersection, and I give her the street names.  She simply tells me not to move and will be there shortly.  As I stand there patiently waiting to see a familiar face, I watch everything going on around me.  The streets are filled with people still trying to figure out what to do, there are emergency vehicles everywhere, black cars with darkened windows and debris all over the streets and sidewalks, I can only assume from the bombs.  Finally, I see Abby, my friend, coming towards me and we tightly embrace and cry together for what seems like forever standing on that street corner.  As we walk back towards the hotel, I realize I was only blocks from there, but I had no sense of where I was, really no sense of reality yet.

We are now away from it all huddled in our hotel room, but it is still all around us. Sitting in the room glued to the television as we watch it all played out over and over again and watch the bombs explode, I still cringe every time.  We are locked in our little world of a room as the city is closed down around us as the city police, FBI, National Guard and whoever else scour the city for the bombers and try and identify them with all the photos taken during the race.  We are bombarded with phone calls from the media (no idea how they found us), they are simply looking for a statement from someone in their neighborhood to help people understand back home what is going on around us.  I really have nothing to say as I am still in shock just like the rest of the country, how can this happen?  How did they do this amongst all those people? Why would they do this? So many questions swirling in my head.

The one moment in time from this experience I will remember forever came the next morning, wearing my race shirt that has Boston Marathon 2013 written a crossed it, and walking to the coffee shop across from the hotel. A motorcade of police officers were coming down the street and they stop, and they allow me to cross the street in front of them.  I waved and slowly walked in front of them as tears start streaming down my face again thinking of what they have seen and how this one simple gesture brought reality gushing back into my body of what all these people endured that day. How one moment changed the life of so many people.  People simply standing there cheering on their friends and family to achieve a goal that most people can only dream of achieving. I think of all those runners still out there on that course unable to finish and now knowing what was happening.  I am angry! I am angry that they took this experience from these people and changed it forever for me.

I cannot lie and say this experience did not change me.  I had to come to grips with what happened and how it affected me even though I was not injured.  Would I do another marathon? Will I ever go back to Boston? Can this happen again?  There was a process of healing, nightmares for months, waking up night after night to a pile of bodies covering the finish line.  Why didn’t I go help people, why couldn’t I move?  I will probably not be able to answer all my questions as to how I reacted the way I did that day, but I do know I did run another marathon and I did go back to Boston and run over that finish line again.  All we can do is live our lives and love the people around us and not take anything for granted.  I sit and cried as I wrote this, reliving it all again still fresh in my mind seven years later.

That Monday, April 15, 2013, will live in my memory forever as a day to not be forgotten, but to be thankful for the life I have and to be able to live another day to run another race.