Alameda Runners – Get After It!

Thanks for all of the phone calls and e-mails voicing concerns for my safety.  I did not run the Boston Marathon this year.  As all of the readers who know me can attest, I love running and I love people.  I can’t comprehend why someone would want to harm anyone for any reason.  It makes me sad to see people getting injured.  A lot of my friends have been making comments and asking me questions about peoples reactions and how I would have reacted if that happened to me.

Here are my responses to some questions regarding the bomb blasts at the 2013 Boston Marathon.

Did you see what happened at the Boston Marathon?  First of all, I did not watch the coverage of the bomb blasts.  When I saw it on the news, I turned it off or turned to something else.  It breaks my heart to see senseless violence.

What about the guy who got knocked over by the blast then got up and kept going?  My response is, marathons are hard.  When you get to the finish line after 4+ hours of running, the only thing on your mind is that finish line.  The first two hours of a marathon are easy.  The third hour becomes more difficult because you worry about  your preparation.  The fourth hour is hard.  The excitement from the day before is starting to take its toll on you.  The lack of sleep from being in a hotel and getting up early are starting to wear on you.  The fourth hour, of a four hour marathon is pure hell.  When you are that close to the finish line (a couple hundred yards), the only thing in life is the finish line.

Would I have stopped to help people?  I am not a medic but I am trained in first aid.  I do not know if my training would help, but I would have stopped to make sure everyone was okay.  If I did stop, I would have done my best to help and stayed until released by the authorities.  After I was released, I would have finished the race even if I had to crawl to a finish line that was taken down.

Would I have been upset if I was told the race was cancelled when I was at mile 25?  I would have been devastated.  You have to qualify about a year in advance for Boston.  That means most people have to invest more than two years of training to run the Boston Marathon.

At mile 25, you have been through hell and are running on determination and the promise of almost finishing.  You immediately know you have to stop.  A bomb blast is entirely up to the imagination.  The implications don’t really sink in for a few hours because the body is so fatigued.  I don’t know how I would feel if that happened to me.  I imagine that every thing about it feels horrible for the poor people who were out on the course.

I will stop here because it hurts me to imagine how the people involved feel.  I hope something like this does not happen again.
Mike’s Thoughts:  Sorry to hijack Ted’s post, but I share a lot of the same thoughts … it’s such a tragedy that three people lost their lives, along with those injured in the bomb blasts.  They are all in my thoughts as they face a difficult and painful road to recovery.