Jim and I had planned to run together. We always start out that way. We also know that it is very rare that we will finish together. Almost always somebody has a good day and one of us has a not-so-good day.
We knew from past Bostons that if you have something distinctive on your shirt the crowd will call out and yell encouragement to you. Once, back in the 90's we sewed little Velcro tabs to our shirts and made a bunch of cloth strips with the name of each town along the course that we would change as soon as we left one town and approached the next. Everybody thought we were from their town and yelled like crazy for the local guys. Finally an older woman runner who resembled Nurse Ratchet gave us a look like we had just made a crude bodily sound during vespers and demanded to know where we were really from. We told her Indianapolis and she harrumphed and fell off the pace. A couple of years ago the track coach at Indiana University gave us two of the singlets that the track and cross county teams wear. When we wear them at Boston everybody either yells "Go Indiana" or "Hoosiers!" or sometimes "Larry Bird" or "Bobby Knight". We wore them in South Africa for Commrades and people yelled "Jones!" (think about it).
Anyway, Jim and I ran together for the first five miles or so and we would hear "Indiana!" After a while Jim wasn't beside me anymore and I would hear "Indiana!" when I went past and then a few seconds later "Indiana!" again and I knew he was just a little behind me. Before long I stopped hearing the second "Indiana!" and I figured he had made a pit stop, which he often does in races, and would catch back up. As time went on and I hit the hills at 17 miles I went into that mental tunnel where all I was really thinking about was grinding on. The hills seemed bigger and longer this year and by the time I came down through Boston College to Cleveland Circle I wasn't thinking about anything besides how much I wanted to get to the end. Eventually I did and started the long walk down Boylston to get my drop bag, collecting water, power bars, bananas and my medal along the way.
I gimped my way back to the apartment we had rented which was a few blocks before the finish line, right on the course. I had to cross back over the course to get there and it seemed like a million runners were still steaming by with that dazed look of complete exhaustion and relieved elation that people get when they're close to the finish. I ducked into a Starbucks for just a minute and when I came out the whole world had changed. There were no runners anywhere and cops were swarming all over yelling at people to vacate the neighborhood. I asked someone what was going on and they told me two bombs had gone off at the finish line. At that moment all I knew was that bombs had gone off after I finished and Jim was behind me. For all I knew he was dead.
We don't run with our phones so I couldn't call him. We only had one key to the street door to the apartment building and Jim had it. I had nowhere to go but the stoop and the cops were yelling to get off the street. For no reason I can think of I rang the bell. Jim couldn't possibly be there because he was behind me and I just got there. Miraculously, the door buzzed and I could open it. I went up stairs and Jim opened the apartment door. Now, I've got to tell you, neither Jim nor I are any competition for Bradley Cooper or just about anyone else in the looks department but he never looked so good to me. We figured out later that he didn't have to go nearly as far as I did to retrieve his drop bag plus he was able to walk faster than me at that point, plus he didn't stop to get coffee so he beat me back to the apartment. He was not in the immediate vicinity when the bombs went off but he heard them.
We had plane resevations out at 6:30 and we decided, under the circumstances, we'd better get our butts to the airport as soon as possible. When we got out on the street it was unreal. Absolutely nothing was moving. All traffic had stopped and the police were everywhere. People began coming out of their apartments with stunned looks and wandering into the middle of the street. I'll never forget it. Right in the middle of Newberry Street, normally bustling with traffic, people were just standing and hugging each other. Many, many women were weeping and the men looked shell-shocked. I remember thinking that these people will never feel competely safe here again. Their world had just changed forever.
It was clear we weren't going to get a cab where we were and the buses and the subway were shut down. We shouldered our packs and, on the advice of local guy, started hiking toward Cambridge. We got to the Charles and spotted an empty cab stopped at a light. I yelled to ask if he'd take us to the airport and he looked over his shoulder and said "Get in fast". Apparently he'd been told to get off the streets too but he was willing and we were desperate so it was a match made in heaven. He was a big guy, from Haiti, and he warned us not to be concerned with the way he drove. He then took us on the most spectacular cab ride I've ever had. He knew short cuts that we not only illegal, they were totally better than any thrill park. He cut through going the wrong way on one of those loop drives were hotel customers drop off their bags. He cut through the emergency drop-off lane at Mass General (there were no ambulances in sight). He turned down one street and when he saw it was backed up at the far end, backed up against traffic for a half a block. People crossing the street and not paying any attention as they talked on their cell phones jumped back with horrified looks. It was crazy.
All of this frenzy just added to the surreal feeling. Jim and I were booked and rebooked several times and eventually caught a couple of connecting flights and made it home to Indiana about 2:00 a.m. It wasn't until the next day that things started to sink in and I really began to appreciate just how lucky we were. It was all so random. There was apparently no reason they set the bombs off when they did. It was seemingly just a matter of when they got around to it. At first I resolved never to go back to Boston or New York, or any big marathon for that matter. It's all too crazy. As the days have passed and my wife, Linda, and I have talked about it, however, I've had a change of heart. We love Boston. For many reasons, not limited to the Marathon, Boston has been a special place for our family. We took our son there for several surgeries when he was a very young boy and the people were wonderful to us. We met Tommy Lenard of the famous Eliot Lounge and he made some calls and had us treated like royalty at Cheers where, at the age of six, they let my son tend bar, bandages and all. Special things like that just always happened when we went to Boston and the more we thought about it the angrier we got that somebody would visciously assault a place of such charm and a purely innocent event like the marathon.
So I will go back and run there again and do it with pride and gratitude for all the people who line the course and call out encouragement and bring their kids to hand you orange slices just like their parents brought them when they were kids. Distance running is not a team sport. It's a personal thing and it can be isolating. But Boston is different. It's a demonstration of the good in people, of the willingness to work and to strive and to overcome. The Boston Marathon is a community celebration of the human spirit. Twisted, disgusting, cowardly mutations of defective DNA seeking revenge for their own failures can attack it but they and their kind are no match for it. Marathon runners and the people who line the course to support them and to honor the effort are not just a bunch of Good-Time Charlies who show up for a party and run scared at the first sign of adversity. They are people of guts and determination who never, ever give up. The same drive that compels someone to persevere through the challenge of a marathon will bring more people than ever to Boston next year and I intend to be there with them. There are no finer people in the world.
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