My Boston Marathon 2013

  I will never forget the Boston Marathon 2013.  The Boston Marathon is the Super Bowl, the Jerusalem, the World Cup of running.  Its history and prestige is unsurpassed.  I had the opportunity to get a private tour of the B.A.A. museum before the race. I got emotional hearing the stories, seeing the medals, and partaking of the feelings of the legendary Boston Marathon.  The excitement in the days leading up to the marathon were palpable.   That feeling will never leave me and has only been deepened by what happened on race day 2013.

I started my day where the bomb went off, at the finish line at 5:15am.  I would be running the course out-n-back.  Running the Boston Marathon twice in one day is trivial after what happened but it only increased my passion about the terrorist attack.  Having finished my second marathon of the day in an official time of 3:35.33 (my 1^st marathon was 4:02.30), the feeling of running 52.4 miles was pure jubilation.  As I was talking with my wife about the exciting day I had experienced, 25 minutes after I had finished, I suddenly heard and felt a BOOM.  I was now on a parallel road merely 1 block from the finish and I immediately KNEW that it was a bomb.  Not knowing how or where, I kept making my way to the hotel.  People started poring out of the side roads from the finish, running, confused, with many crying.  Sirens began sounding and within minutes, police cars and ambulances came poring in around me.  Tired, cold, and confused I went straight back to the hotel.

The ensuing hours came and went quickly.  I was in shock.  My hotel was on lockdown.  20 cop cars and a dozen ambulances were around the hotel and side streets of my hotel.  The scene of the crime was blocked by only a single building.  Tension was high as we watched on the news about how the race was halted, people rushed to the hospital, and details came in from the finish line.  I’m still confused by the parody of what happened.  There are very few things in my life that match the positive feelings of the Boston Marathon.  My wedding day, the birth of my two sons, finishing a 100 mile race…and Boston Marathon.  Yet a day of positives was shattered.  I will never understand why choosing a marathon as the sight for a terrorist attack but it has had my head spinning since the event occurred.  It is something that will live under my skin until the day I die.

But as I contemplated this on my mellow and stiff-legged 4 mile run 3 days after the race, I vowed to be back at Boston next year and at every Boston I can for the rest of my life.  It’s only increased my passion of this sport I love.  As the running community rally’s and unites around this, running marathons will only become more popular, positive feelings will overcome this single hate crime, & the friends and family we love will become closer.  My resolve as a human to be better has increased.  No I won’t forgot Boston 2013, but I will be back in 2014.  Keep running everyone…

B.A.A. Private Tour

Half done. Casual 4:02.30

6 of us ran the marathon backwards including Runner's World Editors Jeff Dengate, Bud Coats, and Warren Green.  The other two, Scott and Thor ran the Double.

Double done.  Official Marathon time of 3:35.33

View from the hotel room 20 min after the explosion.  Ambulances below and cop cars on side streets.  Finish line is on the other side of that building.

News teams and armed forces outside the hotel the morning after.