Kendrin and I were together on Marathon Monday last year. This is her story.
I was spectating at the corner of Hereford and Newbury with my friend Kara when I heard the first explosion. A stranger standing next to us nervously asked, “What was that?”. I assumed the noise was related to the festivities of the day and responded, “Don’t know, it’s too late in the day for a flyover.” Just moments later, we heard the second explosion. This time we were silent. Within seconds we knew something was terribly wrong. Spectators were fleeing from Boylston and police officers were waving for us to clear the area. A feeling of terror set in. I feared the worst and worried that our city was under attack, that the two explosions may have been the first of many more to come. In an effort to escape the area quickly, Kara and I got on Hubway bikes that were parked nearby. We biked away from the smoke and the panic, desperate to find the runners we had been waiting to cheer on, our friend Jerel and my boyfriend Dave. We biked along the course and I seemed to have superhuman vision as we approached the sea of runners who had been stopped at Mass Ave. Among the masses, I quickly spotted Jerel and another friend I didn’t even know would be running as a bandit that day. I called out for them and told them there had been explosions. I continued to bike along the course frantically yelling for Dave until I spotted him as he approached the bottleneck of runners, all 25.7 miles into their journey at that point. As more runners accumulated, they questioned why the race was at a standstill. Although Kara and I were mostly clueless about what had happened, we were more informed than most, so we notified the runners that there had been explosions at the finish–our announcements met with anger, confusion, and tears.
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Kendrin and Dave at the liver walk
to the finish line |
For every story of tragedy and loss, there are thousands more stories of near misses, people who made last minute decisions that kept them out of harm’s way that day. On our way to Hereford, Kara and I had walked along the course on Boylston, pushing through the crowds near the finish line and both bombing sites. The walk along the crowded sidewalk was slow-going, though, so we made a decision to backtrack to get to an alley near the finish line, which allowed us to run along the back of the buildings to get to Hereford. We had been waiting less than 5 minutes when we heard the first explosion. By all accounts, I was extremely lucky that day, but that hasn’t made the healing easy. Although I have never run a marathon before, running has always been therapeutic to me and I can’t think of a better way to heal from the events of that day than to “run it out.” I am so honored to be running the 2014 Boston Marathon with the American Liver Foundation’s Run for Research team. I will run those 26.2 miles to support an amazing cause and also as a tribute to the awesome strength of the City of Boston and to honor those who lost life and limb that day.
There is a superstition among Boston Marathon runners that, although you can train on the course, you should not run across the finish line on Boylston until race day. I, respectfully, do not abide by this superstition. I like to think that the finish line belongs to all of us who were forever changed that day—victims, survivors, first responders, spectators, Bostonians, the running community at large, and so many others. Something was taken from us on April 15, 2013 and I like to think that I take a little bit of it back every time I run across that finish line on a training run. I am counting the days until I, along with the other 35,999 runners and the City of Boston, get to proudly take back that finish line for real on April 21, 2014.
Kara Cooks and Eats 