We were about at the 19-mile mark of the 2013 Boston Marathon when we heard there’d been two explosions at the finish line. We didn’t take it that seriously; people shout all kinds of things along a racecourse. But a mile later, a number of police vehicles roared past, and at that point we figured something really had happened.
As we approached Mile 21 at Boston College, a dozen race volunteers in yellow jackets moved from the roadside to block the route. I made a tentative move to continue, but the volunteers insisted I stop. They told us that the course had been closed.
Surreal.
That was the word we started using. The fabled Boston Marathon, in its 117th year, had come to a screeching halt.
I’d been running a lousy race. I should say: “walking” a lousy race. Just past the 10-mile mark, a “minor” calf injury nailed me. There was shooting pain, and I grabbed the shoulder of my longtime training partner, Phil Stewart, to avoid falling.
A debilitating injury is always bad news. But this was especially bad news. I was on my way to setting a record for completing the most consecutive Boston Marathons: 46. And with 16 miles to go, I wasn’t sure I could even walk.
It turned out I could. So I just walked at the fastest possible pace and started doing the math. The Boston Athletic Association (BAA), which organizes the event, turns off the official clock at six hours. I needed to limp along at a 15-minute-per-mile pace to make that, so it would be tight.
For the first time in 46 years, I was going to have family awaiting me at the finish line instead of in the Newton hills. Since Phil, also a Bethesdan, owns an outfit called Road Race Management, he’d been able to secure eight tickets for the bleachers at the finish. My wife, Carol, and seven other people in my cheering squad had decided to catch me at the 16-mile mark, before taking the T to the finish. They waited—and waited—wondering what had happened to me.
When I finally reached them, my daughter, Emily, son Evan, and his wife, Ali, began walking with Phil and me. Meanwhile, Carol, her sister, her nephew and two friends hopped the T to go downtown.
After hitting that roadblock at Boston College, I sat on a bench with Phil and tried to process the bizarre turn of events. Volunteers gave me ice for the calf and a space blanket. We heard that the explosions had killed three and injured at least 20.
I thought back to when our bus had arrived at the starting point in Hopkinton a few hours earlier. One runner had remarked on the recent troubled history of Patriots’ Day, created to mark Paul Revere’s famous 1775 ride warning of the British troops, and the traditional day on which the marathon is run. The Oklahoma City bombing (1995), the Waco siege (1993) and the Virginia Tech shootings (2007) had all taken place on or around that day. No one in the conversation had suggested a sequel, but that discussion suddenly seemed eerie.
I tried to imagine the scene 5 miles away, but it seemed impossible. For thousands of runners—and certainly for me—that half-mile stretch of Boylston Street has always been a special place. It’s what we envision during hours of winter training; it’s where many of us have realized our dreams. But on this day, people apparently lay dead or badly injured along that same stretch of road.
The one piece of good news came from my son Carter, a BC alumnus who was at the school with his girlfriend, Katie. Carol had called him to report that her train had been stopped before she could reach the finish line. She’d found a Best Buy in Kenmore Square, a mile from the finish, where she could watch the news reports.
The volunteers told us that a bus would come fetch us. But Carter noticed some people headed toward downtown Boston on a sidewalk and asked if I wanted to press on. I suspected we wouldn’t get far, but it made sense to try to reach the finish. So off we went, all seven of us. If other runners followed, I didn’t notice.
