2013 Boston Marathon
On Tuesday afternoon I kept breaking down into sobbing fits while I’m reading the news feeds on line. It’s not the horrific events that are causing me to do this thing that I have no knack for. It’s the people I know who are telling these stories. These are my people, this is my community and now these things are part of my story.
This thing hit my home and my house and my friends. And I’m overwhelmed by emotion – (which is something else I have little skill at and don’t really know how to rationalize).
But, it’s going to be ok. I am ok. You will be ok. Our community and our friends are going to be ok.
We are strong. We know we are strong. We don’t take suffering lightly, but it doesn’t scare us. We are endurance athletes. We endure. It’s what we do. It is our strength and our gift to the world. We set an example of endurance.
We will keep moving forward, because that’s what we do. We will grab for that next hand hold and pull ourselves towards a brighter future. We make our way in this world.
Believe me when I tell you that most of the people in this world are good people with good intent. And that we as runners and endurance athletes are among the best.
There a random few evil people, but they are few and we don’t plan our lives in their intent.
Please, my friends permit me to tell you my story. It is a story about the 2013 Boston Marathon. It was a hard thing to bring into the world.
…
I sat down on the curb and lay on my back. One of the cops came over and asked me if I needed an ambulance. I said ‘no, I just ran a marathon and I’m kinda tired, but I’m ok’.
There was an ambulance there. They had a man on the ground and were working on him. He had no visible injury. He wasn’t a runner. They loaded him up and took off. We were two or three blocks west of the Finish line.
I got up and moved over to the wall with the chain link fence that looks down onto the Mass Pike. It was starting to get cold. There was a sea breeze coming in off the harbor and the late afternoon sun couldn’t compete. All I had were my shorts and a Team Hoyt technical tee and they were both still a bit damp from the race.
I didn’t have a phone or my wallet or anything.
It was like a scene out of some archetypal Boston police show. The two cops manning the barricade had no uniforms, no badges, like they were just plucked from the crowd. They don’t know anything. They just knew we couldn’t go past. People were milling around, a mix of runners and bystanders, all looking past the barriers.
The one cop was an enormous muscular Italian dude with a broken nose who seemed plucked from central casting with his tight T-shirt, blue jeans, crew cut, boots and heavy Boston accent. He alternated yelling at people and saying comforting things to his girlfriend who was on the curb with me. She was from Boston central casting as well with her big hair, tight miniskirt and white, half-high cowgirl boots.
It’s all so weird. I just sit and shiver.
Another runner, a lady from California comes over to shiver with me and see if we can figure out something to do.
Until I can’t take it anymore.
I see a little burger joint on the other side of the intersection and go over to at least get out of the wind.
There are a couple fans in there just back from the Red Sox game; they tell me about the walk-off homer in the 9th and one guy offers me half a cookie. There are two T-workers talking about the train schedules.
I have a brain storm. I ask the lady at the register if they have any big plastic trash bags. She goes off to get me two. She is an immigrant from somewhere in our city of migrants and she tells me how awful this is to happen to a thing that is supposed to be a celebration.
These are excellent extra-large clear trash bags. It goes all the way down to my ankles when I tear a head hole.
Equipped with my anti-wind gear I head back out to the curb and give the lady from Calli the other bag. She is very thankful. I ask her if I can use her cell phone. All the charity runners carry phones. I leave a long garbled message on my wife’s voicemail that can be summarized as “I have no idea what’s going on but I’m ok”.
They had stopped us just in front of that little underpass dip right before the turn into Hereford St, about a half mile from the finish line. They didn’t tell us anything else, just “the race is over, you can’t go this way”. I was so tired from the horrible race I was having I just wanted to go somewhere and sit down.
Moments earlier I had heard some woman out on the course say that there had been some explosions. I knew something was going on. I didn’t really care what it was at that point. I was focused as any marathoner in the last mile to be done suffering and sit down somewhere and have a cold beer.
I could see the Pru and knew the Marriott was over there somewhere and was trying to circle around the back to it. That’s when I ran into the Officer and his girlfriend and their hasty barricade. That lady from California and I just sat and waited with nothing else to do and nowhere to go.
…
It wasn’t my day on the course. I had gone in with a race plan to try to cling to 8 minute miles until I got to the hills, try not to lose too much time in the hills and hopefully experience some sort of miracle on the back side of Heartbreak that would get me home. It was an outside shot.
It all went fairly wrong from the start. I was back in the third wave with the other charity runners this year. It was fairly slow going coming down the hill out of Hopkinton center. In the third wave there is no sorting by pace. Initially it is a bit of a mix-up as people, many of whom have never run the course before, try to settle in.
I ran on the left shoulder so I could avoid the crush and pass people when I needed to. The crowded start cost me about 30 seconds off of my pacing plan. I figured I’d make that up and be right on 8’s by the 5k mats.
Less than a mile in I realized my left shoe was untied. I didn’t double knot them when I put them on in the morning. What an idiot. My 15th Boston marathon and I forget to tie my shoes. I figured I’d be taking them off before the race for stretching or something and I’d double up when I put them back on.
I never did. I forgot. Now they were untied. There was nothing I could do. I pulled off and lost another 30 seconds tying my shoes.
I let my pace ratchet up to 7:30’s on the downhills to compensate and by the time I got to 5k I was right on 8 min miles overall. I tried to settle in. I could not. I felt terrible. I pulled over to walk for a minute just before the 5 mile mark and knew then that my race goals were gone.
Now I was doing the calculations in my head on how I could back it off and have a ‘fun run’ and enjoy the day. I figured I was in decent shape and could maybe run 5 minutes and walk a minute and that would be ok.
That was when the back pain started. Like someone was grinding a billy club maliciously right between my shoulder blades. The more I ran the more it hurt. The soreness soon spread to my back muscles and neck. I was in a lot of pain. It made running awkward and that made everything else hurt.
I tried different run-walk patterns to see if I could find a cadence that I could handle, but it was all just misery and I wasn’t even at the half way point.
I remembered that I had woken up Thursday or Friday with a crick in my back. I thought I had just slept funny. Thinking back on it now I remember one of those days Coach gave me a stretching video where you put the foam roller under your back and roll back and forth. I remember trying to do the stretch and watch the video at the same time and I think that must have been when I did something.
…
Charity runners are an interesting lot. They have wonderful enthusiasm and are celebrating the entire time they are running the marathon. They have their own moving cheering sections that jump into the race and run with them. It’s a really good attitude. It’s a big celebration.
They tend to wear costumes. They have pictures and writing and placards and ribbons hung all over them. They run in packs. They are happy, hopeful, committed people and athletes.
They don’t like uphill running. Whenever my section of the third wave hit any incline at all everyone would slow down and I’d be running up their backs.
I don’t mean to offend anyone but a good number of the 3rd wave were clueless at water stops. The people in front of me would suddenly realize there was a water table on the side of the road like being wakened violently from a walking dream. They’d change direction by 90 degrees and lurch across the road in front of you to get to the tables. Once they got a cup they would stop dead.
It caused pile ups and clogging at the tables. I had my bottle with me and was just trying to stay out of the way. Even so each of those early water stops slowed the flow of the whole race down.
The same thing occurred when the 3rd wave denizens realized they knew someone in the crowd. They reversed direction and headed straight for the spectators. The spectators came out onto the course like the meeting area at the airport. Everyone did a big group hug, danced around a little and generally had a swell meet up in the middle of the road.
I was a charity runner too this year. I was running for Team Hoyt. I had the Team Hoyt shirt on and would get some occasional shouts of encouragement. As I suffered along I figured if Dick could do Kona with Ricky I figured I should at least man up and finish this marathon.
At the half way point I wanted to leave the race. I was struggling, trying to maintain a 30 second – 30 second walk-run. My back hurt so badly. I was thinking “I am in so much pain and I’m not even in the hills yet. Why am I doing this? I’m not doing anyone any good out here suffering like this. I should get off the course.”
I knew I wouldn’t. To get off the course I’d have to go to a med tent and be transported and I knew that would take hours and hours to get into Boston. It was faster to walk.
As I continued to limp along the left shoulder I did see two people in those miles being wheeled away on stretchers having been brought low by Boston’s fast start.
At the ½ marathon mat I flipped the Marathon Photo guys the bird. I’m not happy about that but I wasn’t having a great day. Why does everyone want to take your picture when you’re suffering?
I pulled into a med tent around mile 14 to get some lube because the shirt was starting to chafe. I told the guy about my back and asked him if he could do anything. He rubbed some sort of cream on it but it did nothing. There was a woman sitting on the cot next to me throwing up Gatorade into a plastic bag. I got out of there.
…
They were waving ambulances and fire trucks by and official vehicles were whizzing all around us with their sirens blaring. We sat on the curb and shivered, the lady from California and me.
A motorcycle cop came up to us in our trash bag dresses and told us they were bussing runners down to the common for bag pick up and family meeting. We walked down the road and got on one of two T busses filled with dazed runners. I lost the lady from California.
Everyone was talking about the bombs. This was when we started to piece together what was going on.
The driver took us to the common on the other side of the finish line. This plan seemed to be half-executed because when we got there no one else was there. There was no family and there were no bags. Most of us runners decided just to sit on the bus and stay warm until something happened or someone came to find us.
There were three ladies on the bus sitting across from me, runners all of them. One was wearing a winter coat with a fur collar. Another was wearing a stylish leather jacket. A third was wearing a modern-looking white leather jacket. I asked incredulously “Where did you get winter coats?”
They said that they had been standing around on Comm Ave after the race was stopped. A lady came out of her apartment with an armful of coats for the runners. Other people came out with trash bags and bottled drinks. Residents were inviting the runners in to use the bathrooms and get warm.
That’s our city. That’s our race. Those are our people.
…
I was limping along in Newton with my back screaming pain into my head. Walk jogging on the left shoulder trying not to get tackled by drunk spectators. I was doing 30-30s and every time I’d stop to walk they’d get in my face and yell at me. Then, when I’d start running again they’d all celebrate as if they had inspired another casualty to carry on.
There were people proffering orange slices and hands for slapping but I couldn’t slap any hands and that made the little kids sad. Sorry kids.
The head of a med tent at mile 18 locked eyes with me and pulled me in saying that he had a massage therapist on staff. I lay on the table and she was asking me if this hurt or that hurt and all I could say is it all really hurts. I was exhausted. Some other A-hole photographer was trying to get a good shot of me being worked on and I called him out. I said “Really? That’s the picture you’re going to take?”
I got up and kept going and my back pain subsided for a couple miles. But I was toast. I was doing the walk jog up Heartbreak with the rest of the walking dead. Heartbreak Hill is where the unwise runners and first-timers realize that they may have gone out too fast in the beginning and they begin harvesting their rewards of struggle.
There’s a great crowd on Heartbreak. The kids write all over the road with colored chalk before the race – names, pictures and words of inspiration. Heartbreak Hill is the final barrier before Boston. It’s one of the landmarks; it’s an inflection point in the race, maybe even a bit of a shrine to this 117 year old race.
I was trudging along the left shoulder when people started yelling “Go Team Hoyt!” I was confused and wondering why I was all of a sudden so popular dragging my carcass up Heartbreak Hill. I stopped and turned. About 50 feet behind me was Dick Hoyt pushing Ricky up the hill with their entourage of 5 or 6 other runners.
I waited for them and said ‘hi’. There was a swarm of people around them cheering them on. They were focused on enjoying their race in their city.
There was a Japanese runner with a full-size camera taking pictures of everything. He was running around the course back and forth celebrating his Boston marathon with thousands of digital mementos. This race means so much to runners all over the world.
Dick was walking slowly so I left them to their thing and kept run-walking up to the top of Heartbreak and down the back side. The back pain was coming back and it was excruciating. I had a mantra going in my head that went something like “It really hurts…It really hurts…” Not the most inspiring mantra.
I limped along to mile 23 and decided to just walk. 3 miles. I would just walk. I was disgusted with myself and miserable. Having a nice long self-pity party. I was passed by 70 and 80 year old runners. I was passed by fat people wheezing. I was passed by challenged athletes with their guides and ex-soldiers with prosthetics.
I was a miserable sack of shit. I was getting cold from the head wind coming in off the water. I was walking. I was dehydrated and a little woozy. I just wanted to get to the hotel and lay down.
…
After sitting on the bus by the common for awhile we started to see people with their bags. I was trying to help the out-of-towners give directions to their families. “Tell them you’re in front of Cheers…” I said, “Tell them you’re next to the Swan Boats…” They struggled to get phone calls through but were able to text. The network was sketchy and overloaded.
Our bus driver still didn’t know anything. We figured we’d go out and investigate a little, maybe figure out what was going on. A long line of SWAT and K-9 and Bomb Squad trucks and vans went by in a convoy with names of towns from all over the state of Massachusetts. A school bus full of men in camouflage parked behind us.
I and two other guys from the bus to nowhere heard rumors that they were getting people their bags and started walking back towards Boylston and the finish line. Another photographer was stalking us – getting shots of the miserable lost runners.
They had Boylston blocked off at the Public Gardens in front of the Ritz. This is about 2 blocks after the finish line.
We started grabbing anyone carrying a race bag and asking where they got it. We got mixed messages from the emergency personnel in front of the Ritz but were able to work our way up a deserted Newbury street, running parallel to the finish, on the east side, one block over.
When we turned the corner on Berkley we were greeted by a glorious and hopeful site. Low and behold a baggage bus with numbers close to mine was there, as were some volunteers.
I had been wandering around Boston for a couple hours now in my race gear and a large clear plastic trash bag with no phone or wallet. I started pointing frantically to my bib number still on my chest and smiling and entreating the volunteers on the bus to help me get my bag.
The woman there, a volunteer had a piece of paper with the baggage bus locations, and said my bus was right around the corner.
My bus was located, just on the other side of the barricade on Boylston. They wouldn’t let me over there but they were unloading all the bags into carts and pushing them down the other side of Berkley in piles for people to sort through.
I pitched in and helped them unload the cart repeating my bib number out loud as we sorted through the piles. I thanked them and told them we were all volunteers today.
Then I had it! My bag! I have never been so happy to get my stuff.
…
I limped up Comm Ave and I knew I was going to make it to the finish. I walked past the ‘1 mile to go sign’. Then everyone was stopped and race officials were blocking the road. We were too far back to hear any explosions or to see any of the carnage on Boylston Street.
A woman next to me said “Do we still get a medal?” and I thought “Really? That’s your first worry right now? If we get a medal? Who gives a crap about the medal?”
…
From the suite on the 38th floor of the Marriott Anthony felt the building shake and saw the plumes of smoke as they waited for our runners to arrive to the club’s room. No one knew where I was.
My friend Frank finished his 12th and final marathon just before the blast. Of all the great adventures we’ve shared now an arthritic hip was forcing him to stop at 12. Not a great way to retire from the thing you love.
We saw another of our club members on TV being wheeled away on cart with her kids in the endlessly looping gory video on the news. They were ok. But they were right there.
My club mate Howard was in the med tent looking for a bag of saline having just finished a hard race when they had to move him over to bring the injured in for triage.
My other club mate Frank was working in the med tent instead of running this year. He had a crew of college students as volunteers and they threw themselves into the chaos and carnage with what they had. These were kids expecting to see some runners passing out and instead were on the front line of a war in a MASH tent with death and gore and shattered bodies.
My friend Mike from McGillivray sports who gave me my charity bib was working the finish line as he does every year. He finally checked in this morning. He was in the thick of it and was clearly shaken up.
Most of my club mates, most of the runners I know, were already in when the bombs hit. Just me and maybe one or two other stragglers were still on the course.
I don’t think Dave McGillivray got his run in last night.
…
When I got my bag I pulled out my sweat pants and hoodie to get warm. I stuffed that plastic bag into the struts of a crowd barrier. I turned on my phone to figure out how I could get to the room. It was after 5:30. I’d left Hopkinton just after 10:00 in the morning.
My phone started going crazy as soon as it turned on. Frantic text messages and tweets and posts and voice massages. Family, work, and far flung social network, all demanding to know where the hell I was.
There were hundreds of incoming messages. It was overloaded. I sent a couple of simple messages to key people to and the world to let them know I was ok, but I couldn’t interact with the hundreds of messages coming at my phone.
My phone and the network couldn’t keep up. It couldn’t refresh and the battery was draining fast.
Ironically the social media rating site Klout sent me a congratulatory message the next day that my score had gone up. I sent them a response that they should probably reconsider the appropriateness of that. All that traffic was people trying to find me.
Mixed into all the communications traffic were messages from national news outlets wanting to talk to me. I didn’t respond. I’m sure they weren’t looking for me; they were trolling social media for eye-witnesses.
I made a call up to the room and found out I could get in the service entrance around the back of the Marriott. The police cordon tape went right up to the side of the door. Everyone was relieved to hear from me but they had already figured out I was ok based on my 40k split. I was 2k away from the finish when the bombs went off.
I ran into one of the guys from the bus and he still couldn’t get his bag and was trying to get into his hotel, the Fairmont, but had no ID and was freezing. I walked with him to the Fairmont which at this point was locked down and turned into a command post. Another camera crew was stalking us. I told him that if he couldn’t get in I’d give him my sweat shirt and sweat pants or he could come with me to the Marriott.
There was a group of officials in the door of the Fairmont telling us it was locked down and part of the crime scene. I told them they needed to do the right thing and that this guy was freezing and lost and a guest of theirs. They took him in and I went off to try to get into the Marriott.
I was so late to the room that everyone except Leanne and Anthony and the massage therapist had left. But there was that heavenly hot shower, that wonderful sandwich and a cold IPA. Crystal worked on my back a little before she left and we told stories and watched the horrific news.
My phone rang and it was my boss looking for me. I sat down and tried to briefly answer all the urgent messages with a brief ‘I’m ok’.
…
As evening approached the hotel threw open the restaurant for free to everyone. Unfortunately they were understaffed with only the workers who were already on site staying late to help. Most of the night shift couldn’t get in. It was a multi-hour wait to get to a table.
We had a suite full of food and drinks. And we invited a runner from Seattle Jeff and his wife up to have a dinner of cold-cuts, potato chips and fruit with us.
Jeff was crossing the finish line when the first bomb went off. His wife Anita was up against the railing in the crowd, right next to the explosion. She wasn’t hurt but the person behind her was and all around her people were.
I got some more beer from the bar. Jeff brought a bottle of wine. We had a nice impromptu feast. I drank too much on top of my battered body. I let my wife know that I was going to stay over and we ordered up some cots from housekeeping.
In the morning I rode the empty train west and home. It was a somber ride.
…
Somewhere in all of this I realized that this wasn’t about me. This was about my community and the people I care about. I realized that all this outpouring was because the community needed me. Needed me to be ok and I needed to help them be ok. I was needed. I had a responsibility.
Before I left the room we had talked through how the Groton Road Race would respond and early Tuesday morning I sent a message from the race that we were all ok and we would carry on, that I was working with the police and medical teams to make sure everyone in our race would be safe.
I realized that I had a responsibility to you to tell this story; this story that causes me to break down as I write it. I realized that now, more than ever, this avatar needs to lead and to set an example of what can be.
I know I’m traumatized. I know some of you are too. I don’t quite know how to deal with it. But even as this story changes me and changes us we are all moving forward together. And I’ll always be out there with you.
This story doesn’t end with grief or retribution or heroics. This story ends where our story continues. As we in the endurance sports community, in the running world and in the family of the Boston Marathon keep doing what we have always done. We are a shining example to the world of what can be done by strong, focused and committed people.
I wore my 1999 Boston Marathon jacket to work and hung it in the front window of my office today. That proud, stark unicorn is a pregnant flag of meaning to me.
I remember my first Boston Marathon almost two decades ago. It damn near killed me, but it changed me. It made me stronger than I had ever been and when I crossed that finish line for the first time I joined a family of courageous and resilient people.
This is a story about the un-crushable spirit of my community and our family. That’s where this story began and that’s where it will continue.
My love and thoughts are with you all. I’ll see you out there.
Thank you. Moving…
Thanks for sharing! I can’t imagine going through that. Next year’s marathon will be very emotional. Wow!