Hard to sum it up. I finished with a PR [personal record] of 2:58 and crossing the finish line was one of the happiest moments of my life. I had friends lined up almost every mile from 18 on and to top it off I had my wife and mom in the finish line bleachers to celebrate with me. This was my fifth marathon and my first Boston; I had finally run the hometown race! Everything about it was amazing, no other sporting event like it, from start to finish everyone is cheering for you, BC kids cheering for a guy wearing a Huskies hat. I have never experienced a running crowd like it.
We got back to Brookline around 2:30, my wife and mom went out to Beacon [Street] to join other friends and family and cheer on the charity runners. After I showered and started to walk out to Beacon I saw two unmarked cars coming barreling down towards Beacon St. and my phone started exploding with messages from friends at the finish line asking if I was OK. I first envisioned a small explosion but soon we learned what had happened. We all just huddled together on Beacon in a daze, watching people like Dick Hoyt [who pushes his wheelchair-bound son in the marathon] run by, not having a clue. We then saw it on the news and I broke down with emotion, not knowing if all my friends or BAA [Boston Athletic Association] teammates had left the area. It was just a sick feeling not knowing where everyone was, how many people were hurt and knowing that we had just left the area. We didn’t know what to do. We had accounted for all of our friends, but we wandered around Beacon Street, it was eerie and guarded by police officers. Brookline being guarded by police! It didn’t feel right to celebrate, we just ate dinner with close friends and made sure to pray before bed.
The outpouring of support and checking in from everyone has been amazing, phone calls and texts from near and as far as Africa.
Let me tell you this, we runners are crazy, we are strong and we are determined. We will be out there in 2014 and it will be bigger and better than ever.
-Christopher Marshall, Assistant Director for Marketing & Sponsorships at Northeastern University Athletics
Marathon Monday. To [some of] those who haven’t lived in Boston, it’s simply Patriots’ Day – it’s just another Monday on the calendar. But in Boston, Marathon Monday is much more. To a lot of Bostonians, it’s their favorite holiday of the year. All schools are closed for the day and a lot of businesses shut down. Hundreds of thousands of people line the streets along the 26.2 mile long route to cheer on these amazing athletes as they run in the world’s greatest marathon. For college students, it’s a day of drinking and going out with your friends.
April 15 started off like a normal day. I woke up, got coffee with a friend, showered and began drinking with my roommate and two of our buddies. We headed over to my cousin’s apartment on Beacon Street, right by the 25th mile marker. His apartment is right on the path and we all sat in his window sills, drinks in hand, cheering on these miraculous athletes as they ran by. Everyone in Boston was in a good mood and the weather was beautiful (a rarity for 2013). Even the Boston PD, often rude and unfriendly, were smiling and letting us be drunk fools for one day. I remember when the three lead male runners ran by. They were all separated by a few feet, knowing that this last mile was a whole new race. We were drunk, but we were genuinely impressed and admired them.
At around 2 p.m. a couple BPD officers came into my cousin’s apartment and told us to get out of the windows and calm down. I remember after they left someone remarking “I wish they had something better to do.” Oh, the irony in the statement and how quickly it would be taken back. About an hour later, I received a text from a friend, “Are you ok??” I was confused why someone would ask me this. I responded, “What the hell do you mean?” What she responded shocked me: “Explosions on Boylston. Tons of people are really hurt.” I remember I was speechless and told everyone at the party to be quiet. Someone quickly turned on the news and we all stood around the TV and watched, horrified. The girls were all crying, the guys too shocked to react. By that time, most of us were getting flooded with texts, all saying the same thing, “are you ok?!” I remember trying to call my parents because I knew they would worry the most, but Boston had shut down the phone lines to prevent any more remote detonations via cell phones.
My roommate and I decided to head home. Outside the apartment was chaos. The hundreds of police that had lined the route had mostly disappeared. The ones still there were yelling at people to get off the streets and go home. Cabs were impossible to grab, and we lucked out by getting a ride from a father who was driving home from the Red Sox game. I knew he saw us as someone else’s kids and knew that he would want the same to happen to his child. At home, all we could do was stare at the news. I was amazed at how quickly after the blast people ran straight towards the blast to help out. This is what the news was showing; the heroes, the brave, the kind. Unlike so many of the tragedies that have happened recently, the news didn’t focus on possible suspects and speculation on who would do such a thing. They focused on those that helped and the many injured.
I don’t know why I’m writing this. I guess I’m sitting at work with nothing to do, unable to concentrate on anything else after such a tragedy. I guess I want my friends from home to better understand what happened, to better understand Marathon Monday. I know I didn’t get it when I first moved to Boston. And I know they don’t realize this wasn’t just an attack. It was an attack on what is one of the happiest days of the year in Boston. I guess I just want to clear my mind. Most of all, I realize how lucky I am that no one I knew was injured, and I feel for those that did. No one will forget this anytime soon. But when we move on, the people of Boston are stronger and closer than ever before. And in that we can find hope.
-Colin A. Beatt is a junior graphic design major
As a co-op at Boston Magazine’s health website Hub Health, the marathon had been taking over my day-to-day life for weeks. I had written dozens of articles about the race, and I spent that morning live blogging, tweeting and photographing the goings-on. I had been in Copley Square and on Boylston Street for hours that day, and I was in Marathon Sports interviewing the store’s employees just an hour before the explosions, a fact that still gives me chills when I think about it.
By some stroke of luck, though, I had moved to Commonwealth Avenue to take photos of the crowds, newly-invigorated with Red Sox fans high off of the team’s ninth-inning win, when the explosions happened. In retrospect, I remember hearing a woman standing nearby say something to her friend about explosions, but it didn’t register with me at the time. I only started to realize something was wrong when policemen ran across the street, cutting off runners and weaving through the crowds, and then sped off down Comm. Ave, sirens blaring. Still, I assumed it was something relatively minor, like an injury or a disorderly conduct arrest. I had no idea.
I walked down Comm. Ave. further to try to get better photos, and it was then that I saw the mass of runners at a standstill in the middle of the street. As someone who has spectated the marathon since I was 10 years old, I knew how big a deal it was to stop the race. Immediately my heart dropped. Just as I went to ask another spectator what was going on, I checked my phone. Frantic texts from friends, family and my boss were rolling in, asking if I was okay. One mentioned explosions, but I assumed they had been caused by a mechanical problem; terrorism never crossed my mind. But then I heard sirens and helicopters from every direction and checked Twitter: There had been a bombing.
Slowly, word spread throughout the crowd. Runners broke down in tears in a combination, I think, of sadness and frustration at not being able to finish something they had worked so hard for. Cramping, exhaustion and shock brought them to the ground around me, and people desperately tried to force cell phone calls through the overloaded servers. It was mayhem, and it was abundantly clear that no one knew what to do.
Like any self-respecting journalist I took a few photos, but with the sidewalks rapidly being closed off and my mom having a nervous breakdown over text message, I decided my first priority was getting home. This task proved difficult. Hordes of people filled the walkways, the crowd an unsettling and bizarre mix of grief — runners lay on the grassy meridian staring blankly ahead, pedestrians cried and hugged — and ignorant bliss — still-drunk college students blasted boomboxes and spectators who hadn’t yet checked their phones cheered on runners who hadn’t yet seen the unmoving block of runners before them. The normally 20-minute walk home took almost an hour, and by the time I reached Northeastern’s campus the city had taken on an eerily quiet stillness, the polar opposite of the happy, hectic din of that morning. Joy had turned to utter disbelief right before my eyes.
-Jamie Ducharme is a sophomore journalism major
My friend and I came down from the second floor of Marino laughing and smiling until we saw a large group of people congregated around the TV. My first thought was that they were all watching the Red Sox game or something, but they were too quiet. I looked at the TV and found out why. Words of “explosions” and “death” flashed across the screen and I was so confused. That was until they showed the video of the two blasts. My hand went over my mouth, I was shocked and I looked to my friend doing the same. I told her we had to go and call our parents. I was so frustrated I had left my phone in my room. She called her parents and I borrowed her phone. I couldn’t get through. We got to our dorm and told everyone to turn on their TVs. I grabbed my phone and kept trying to call and text and I couldn’t get anything through. I could only receive the increasingly worried texts from friends and family. I sat in a room and watched the news. Finally, after about 40 minutes I got through to all my friends and family. I kept an update on my Facebook page of confirmed news. I was glued to the TV. I couldn’t stop watching.
After four hours of watching, the TV was turned off. I was left to reflect on what had happened. Things like this don’t happen in Boston, I thought to myself. I mean, Marathon Monday is the epitome of Boston’s pride and grace as a city; and it had all gone wrong. I reflected on how easily my friends or I could have been there. The night before my mom told me how fun it would be to go watch my first marathon in Boston, I had a friend there an hour before it happened, friends who were on there way to go see it. That night my boyfriend and I clutched each other in stunned, numb disbelief about what happened. It felt like and still feels like a bad dream. It could’ve been any other city, but it was MY city. MY Boston. I recognized those streets and those buildings; it was a five minute walk away. I was young during Sept. 11, and lived far from New York City, but now an attack hit my home. Now I was listening to a silent Boston night, punctuated by the sound of sirens.
Despite all of this, what is getting me through it is that I still believe in humanity. Humanity is still mostly good, and a few truly evil people cannot ruin your view of the whole. If these evil people make you afraid to live your life, they have won. I watched countless acts of bravery that day that made me so proud to be a Bostonian and a human being. I feel the support of Northeastern, Boston and the United States, and it’s incredibly uplifting. Marathon Monday was a tragedy, it struck our city hard but we are resilient and we will heal.
–Kayla Gomes is a freshman physical therapy major.
