4:09:43
Boston 2013 Through the Eyes of the Runners
by Hal Higdon
Foreword by Kathrine Switzer
168 Pages
In the first book on this tragic event, 4:09:43, Hal Higdon, a contributing editor at Runner’s World, tells the tale of the Boston Marathon bombings. The book’s title refers to the numbers on the finish-line clock when the first bomb exploded.
In 4:09:43, Higdon views Boston 2013 through the eyes of those running the race. You will meet George, a runner from Athens, birthplace of the modern marathon, who at sunrise joins the eerie march of silent runners, all aimed at their appointments in Hopkinton, where the marathon starts. You will meet Michele, who at age 2 helped her mother hand water to runners, who first ran the marathon while a student at Wellesley College, and who decided to run Boston again mainly because her daughter Shannon was now a student at Boston University. You will meet Tracy, caught on Boylston Street between the two explosions, running for her life. You will meet Heather, a Canadian, who limped into the Medical Tent with bloody socks from blisters, soon to realize that worse things exist than losing a toenail.
In what may be a first, Hal Higdon used social media in writing 4:09:43. Sunday, not yet expecting what might happen the next day, Higdon posted a good-luck message on his popular Facebook page. “Perfect weather,” the author predicted. “A ‘no-excuses’ day.” Within minutes, runners in Boston responded. Neil suggested that he was “chilling before the carb-a-thon continues.” Christy boasted from her hotel room: “Bring it!”
Then, the explosions on Monday! Like all runners, Higdon wondered whether marathoners would ever feel safe again. Beginning Tuesday, runners told him. They began blogging on the Internet, posting to his Facebook page, offering links to their stories, so very similar, but also so very different. Over the next several hours, days, and weeks, Higdon collected the tales of nearly 75 runners who were there, whose lives forever would be shadowed by the bombs on Boylston Street.
In 4:09:43, Higdon presents these stories, condensing and integrating them into a smooth-flowing narrative that begins with runners boarding the buses at Boston Common, continues with the wait at the Athletes’ Village in Hopkinton, and flows through eight separate towns. The story does not end until the 23,000 participants encounter the terror on Boylston Street. “These are not 75 separate stories,” says Higdon. “This is one story told as it might have been by a single runner with 75 pairs of eyes.”
One warning about reading 4:09:43: You will cry. But you will laugh, too, because for most of those who covered the 26 miles 385 yards from Hopkinton to Boylston Street, this was a joyous journey, albeit one that ended in tragedy. This is a book as much about the race and the runners in the race as it is about a terrorist attack. In future years as people look back on the Boston Marathon bombings, 4:09:43 will be the book that everyone will need to have read.
Foreword by Kathrine Switzer
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1 The Common
Chapter 2 Copley Square
Chapter 3 Athletes’ Village
Chapter 4 Hopkinton Green
Chapter 5 Ashland
Chapter 6 Framingham
Chapter 7 Natick
Chapter 8 Wellesley
Chapter 9 Newton
Chapter 10 Brookline
Chapter 11 Boylston Street
Chapter 12 4:09:43
Chapter 13 The horror!
Chapter 14 Diaspora
Chapter 15 Logan
The Participants
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The ONE Fund
Hal Higdon has contributed to Runner's World for longer than any other writer. An article by Hal appeared in that publication's second issue in 1966. Author of more than 36 books, including 4:09:43, the best-selling Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide, and a novel, titled simply Marathon, Higdon has also written books on many subjects and for various age groups. His children's book The Horse That Played Center Field was made into an animated feature by ABC-TV. He ran eight times in the Olympic Trials and won four world masters championships. One of the founders of the Road Runners Club of America, Higdon also was a finalist in NASA's Journalist-in-Space program to ride the space shuttle. The former training consultant for the Chicago Marathon, he answers questions online for TrainingPeaks, also providing interactive training programs.
Higdon became acquainted with the Boston Marathon as a member of the U.S. Army stationed in Stuttgart, Germany, training with Dean Thackwray, who would make the U.S. Olympic team in 1956 as a marathoner. Higdon knew then that he eventually needed to move upward in distance from his usual track events (including the 3,000-meter steeplechase) to the marathon. He first ran Boston in 1959, then again in 1960, failing to finish both years. “My mistake,” Higdon realized later, “was trying to win the race, not finish the race.”
It took five years for Higdon to figure out the training necessary for success as an elite marathoner, becoming the first American finisher (5th overall) in 1964. On that journey, he wrote an article for Sports Illustrated about Boston titled “On the Run From Dogs and People” (later a book by the same title) that contributed to the explosion of interest in running in the 1970s that continues to this day.
Higdon also wrote a coffee table book titled Boston: A Century of Running, published before the 100th running of the Boston Marathon in 1996. An expanded version of a chapter in that book featuring the 1982 battle between Alberto Salazar and Dick Bearsley, titled The Duel, continues as a best-seller among running books. His most popular running book is Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide, with a quarter million copies sold, now in its fourth edition.
Higdon has run 111 marathons, 18 of them at Boston. He considers himself more than a running specialist, having spent most of his career as a full-time journalist writing about a variety of subjects, including business, history, and science, for publications such as Reader’s Digest, Good Housekeeping, National Geographic, and Playboy. Among his more than three dozen published books are two involving major crimes: The Union vs. Dr. Mudd (about the Lincoln assassination) and The Crime of the Century (about the Leopold and Loeb case, featuring attorney Clarence Darrow). Thus, 4:09:43 offers a natural progression in his long career.
Higdon continues to run and bike with his wife, Rose, from their winter and summer homes in Florida and Indiana. They have three children and nine grandchildren.
“Some would like to forget the horror of the 2013 Boston Marathon. However, many more of us would like to celebrate the unflinching runners, medical staff, and community of Boston for the courage and love they showed each other in marathon's time of greatest need. Hal Higdon's book 4:09:43 is full of inspiring personal stories that reflect how running's worst day may also have been its best.”
Amby Burfoot
Boston Marathon Champion
Editor at Large, Runner’s World
“We realize while reading the marathoners’ own words why they will not be stopped by the bombings that took place. It’s simple: Love is stronger than hate.”
Bill Rodgers
Four-Time Boston and NYC Marathon Champion
“Hal Higdon has captured the absolute dichotomy that was the April 15 Boston Marathon, a very real Tale of Two Cities. It was the best of times and the worst of times, from the beautiful and uplifting marathon celebration that Boston is known for to an absolute day of fear, horror, and mayhem. Told through the emotional lens and perspective of actual runners and other witnesses to terror, the heartfelt story of the 117th running is a complex and sometimes contradictory series of emotions and is at once gripping, sensitive, and inspiring. Runners worldwide and all those who love the Boston Marathon will find 4:09:43 a compelling account of the many emotions of the day as well as a meaningful tribute to its greatness.”
Guy Morse
Former Executive Director of the Boston Athletic Association
Organizer of the Boston Marathon, 1985 to 2012
“The Boston bombings broke the hearts of runners everywhere but only reinforced their spirit. Through the stories of some who were actually there, Hal Higdon tells how ordinary runners like us have become indomitable examples to the whole world.”
Kathrine Switzer
First woman to officially run the Boston Marathon
Longtime TV commentator on the event
Author of Marathon Woman
"Higdon's account avoids the political sensationalizing of the events of April 15, 2013. Instead, he tells the story of Boston through the eyes of dozens of participants, revealing what the event means to hundreds of thousands of runners and how the explosions of that day burst into this iconic event and experience. Read this book if you love Boston."
Jonathan Beverly
Editor in Chief, Running Times
"I was there on April 15, 2013, a hundred yards beyond the finish line when the bombs changed an annual ritual of personal achievement into a horror show. But I didn't see everything there was to see, didn't understand all the stories of bravery and loss happening on Boylston St that day. No one person could, which is why this book is so valuable. It's the closest we can come to having been everywhere on that one terrible, miraculous day."
Peter Sagal
Host of NPR’s Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me
2013 Boston MMarathon Finisher
"Hal Higdon in 4:09:43 proves that the Boston Marathon consists of every runner in the race and every spectator along the course--and when you attack even one, you attack all."
Dave McGillivray
Boston Marathon Race Director
"I can think of no one better equipped than Hal Higdon to tell this story. It is a story of the special kinship of all of us who have run that final straightaway down Boylston Street toward the finish of the Boston Marathon. And it is the story of how those two explosions were instantly and instinctively felt-from whatever distance we experienced them-to be an attack on all of us. This is an amazing story, skillfully woven together by one of our sport's great chroniclers."
John Parker
Author of Once a Runner
“Hal Higdon uses social media and personal correspondence to compile a powerful narrative for the tragic 2013 Boston Marathon. The collection of essays in 4:09:43 is a tribute to a marathon that Higdon knows deeply.”
Roger Robinson
Author of Running in Literature
“He's run Boston 18 times with a PR of 2:21 and best finish of fifth place. He wrote the definitive history about the race, Boston: A Century of Running, as well as countless articles. His training programs have helped thousands of runners qualify for Boston. Now Hal has called on that long lifetime of experience to help us understand the events of the day and the bombing's aftermath. For runners everywhere it is a must-read.”
Roy Benson
Author of Heart Rate Training and Precision Running
"Higdon has captured the local color of that fateful day - a day never to forget - in a book never to forget"
The Florida Times-Union
Natick
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice.
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice. What had been Waverly Street becomes West Central Street, although the highway remains 135. After a slight rise and a curve so gentle they hardly notice it, runners pass Lake Cochituate. In addition to the cheering masses, fishermen can be seen standing by the side of the lake, trying their luck, oblivious to the commotion behind them, the staccato sound of soft-bottomed shoes pounding the pavement not being part of their attention span.
The 15-K checkpoint is beside the lake. Heather Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped another mat in 1:12:35. Far ahead, given their head start, the lead women were closing in on Kenmore Square, one mile to go. By then Rita Jeptoo had opened a 12-second lead on Shalane Flanagan, who had slipped to fourth place. Even with her fast track legs, it seemed unlikely that Shalane could reel Jeptoo in by the time they turned toward the finish line on Boylston Street.
For a brief period of time, at least until the moment Jeptoo crossed the finish line, every runner running the Boston Marathon was on the course together. Every single one of them! The 23,000 runners of Boston 2013 probably covered near 20 miles of road. They filled that road, like a snake slithering toward the sea.
Lee-Callaghan had no time to think about what part of the snake she might be. The Canadian runner was suffering a medical emergency. The top of her right shoe was soaked with blood. A burst blister! This had happened to her once before at the Fredericton Marathon in New Brunswick, Canada. Lee-Callaghan did not like blisters; she did not like blood. She knew she would need to deal with the growing crisis. But how?
Lee-Callaghan decided she had two choices:
-
Be totally stupid and continue, hoping for a PR, obsessing over her Garmin the whole way.
-
Stop at an aid station, bandage up, lose three to five minutes, but finish the race and have fun.
She chose the second option, running into an aid station just past the Natick Common, screaming: "I've got a bloody toe! I need a bandage!"
"Sit down," said the medic, trying to calm her.
Blogging later, the hyphenated runner would describe having a massive panic attack: "I'm taking off my running shoe and bloody sock watching hundreds of runners go by as the clock is ticking during the Boston Marathon!"
While the medic bandaged her toe, she noticed two other men and a woman sitting in the tent, Mylar blankets wrapped around their shoulders. "Neither looked like they intended to get back on the course. They told me I looked strong and wished me luck and said to keep going. I wished them well, thanked the volunteer and ran out of the tent like a bat out of hell."
Thoughts continued to boil within the head of Jen Marr:
Look around:
So many people.
Clapping,
Cheering,
Calling our names.
Kids, so many of them.
So cute.
Holding out licorice, water, jelly beans, oranges, ice,
And best of all, their hands.
"Take it all in," I kept repeating to myself.
High-five the kids.
Wave at the adults.
Thumbs-up to the people holding signs.
We were having fun.
Not everybody was having fun. As it always does, the toughest race on the World Marathon Majors calendar soon would take its toll from runners who might be said to have misbehaved, who perhaps had not trained as hard as planned, who had chosen a toofast pace, who became overwhelmed by the experience of Boston and forgot that they had come to race.
This included Amy Zebala. "The race was phenomenal. It was a gorgeous day: sunny, with temps in the high 40s to mid-50s. After the congested start, the course opened up. Into Natick, I was 5 to 10 seconds ahead of my planned pace, but I was holding back and felt everything was going well. The crowd was vocal, and the miles flew by.
"At about 10 miles, I began to have some tummy issues." Zebala eventually would need to take a bathroom break, but it cost her only a minute, and she was soon back on pace. Time flies when you're having fun.
Erica Greene found the Boston Marathon to be Amazing and Awesome: "The crowds were awesome. There were so many people. It was amazing, so therefore I was never able to settle into a rhythm, because everything was awesome!
"I was giving high fives, asking people if I was going the right way, and asking Team Girl Scouts, ‘Where are Thin Mints?' I was having a ball, but it began affecting my running. I hit a wall at Mile 11."
Mile 11, she said to herself. Really?
Aubrey Birzon Blanda ran wearing a bib that had been signed by Kathrine Switzer at the Expo. Switzer had been one of the earliest of women running Boston, and she remained a celebrity and role model among female runners. This was her 36th consecutive year working with the WBZ-TV team. Switzer also had signed Blanda's bib in 2010 and 2011, but Aubrey this year had struggled with hamstring problems during the last several weeks of training. Partly for that reason, she decided to accept the pace set by a man named Allan she had met walking to the starting line.
"Allan set a tough pace, and the hamstring felt good until Mile 10." It was then that Blanda realized the reason the hamstring didn't bother her was because every other muscle, down to her ankles, was shot. "Six miles to go to the Newton hills, and my quads were completely dead."
"I was trashed."
Tracy O'Hara McGuire, 37, a stay-at-home mom from Portland, Oregon, accepted the cheers of fans along the sidelines, feeling like a superstar: "Thousands of fans screaming your name, cheering you on, pushing you past your limits. It's simply magical."
But as McGuire later would admit, coming through Framingham and into Natick, "the wheels began to fall off." Her stomach felt full. Her head felt dizzy. She started to feel nauseous - and she still had more than half the marathon to run. McGuire decided she had been drinking too much water, so she threw away the bottle she had been carrying.
Carissa von Koch struggled as she passed Mile 11 and approached the town of Wellesley. Her stomach was upset, and she needed a bathroom break, but someone was ahead of her in line, so she kept running, then she changed her mind and turned back. Once inside the porta potty, she heard her watch beep into auto pause mode. At that point, she knew she had lost track of her overall time.
"I stepped out of the bathroom feeling defeated. I thought of all my friends who were running the marathon just to soak up the atmosphere. I wanted to join them, but here I was stuck in the middle: not running fast, but not running for fun, either. I thought of everybody back home checking my progress online. They would feel concerned for me when they realized I was not hitting my pace goals."
Von Koch went back to doing the only option left her: Carrying on despite it all, running smart, conserving energy, and taking what the legs would give her that day.
Michele Keane felt a wave of nostalgia hit her as she passed through downtown Natick. She spotted a restaurant, formerly an ice cream spot when she was growing up. And then she saw her mother, Jean Collette, standing there as always, waving, cheering, shouting, "Michele! Michele!" This was their spot. Her mother still lived in their old house. Michele remembered how, when she was a girl, she and Mom would hand cups of water to passing runners. She stopped for a drink that was as much celebratory as refreshing.
Then she kissed Mom and kept running.
Jessica Reed, 37, a registered dietitian from Athens, Ohio, entered Boston with anticipation that could, at best, be described as lukewarm: "After doing Ironman, I didn't think Boston was such a big whoop." The cheers of the crowd changed her mind. Never in any of the triathlons she had run had Reed encountered such crowd support. That plus the signs many of the spectators held.
"You Are Not Almost There!"
"Toenails Are For Wusses!"
"26.2: Because 26.3 Would Be CRAZY!"
John Munro also was amazed by the energy flowing from everyone standing by the side of the road: "These weren't spectators, they were supporters, who screamed their heads off, who waved funny placards, who said something like, ˜That isn't sweat, it's awesome leaking out.' These were supporters who screamed so loudly at Wellesley College, you could hear them a half-mile before you saw them."
The half-marathon was just past Wellesley College in the town of the same name. The belly of the snake had now reached that point in the Boston Marathon.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
The Ashland Hills
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners.
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners. The challenge comes from the downhill tilt of these early miles. Boston is a downhill course, dropping from 462 feet above sea level on the starting line to 16 feet above sea level on the final run-in at Boylston Street. Among the steepest areas is the first half-mile, nearly a 150-foot drop in elevation, almost a toboggan slide that can get runners in trouble if they run the slide too fast. As much a problem are the several miles continuing from Hopkinton through Ashland and into Framingham: rolling, but rolling more downhill than uphill. Suddenly, runners find themselves moving way faster than their planned pace, a serious tactical mistake for anyone hopeful of running a time equal to or faster than their BQ, the qualifying time that had gotten them into the 2013 Boston Marathon.
Checking their watches at Ashland, smart runners realize this and throttle back, saving energy for the challenging uphill miles to come later, particularly the four hills that culminate with Heartbreak Hill in Newton. Or maybe they do not recognize their mistake until Framingham. Or maybe Newton, by which time it is too late. They are cooked. The four Newton hills will destroy them. And if not then, the subtle downhill from Cleveland Circle at about 22 miles to Kenmore Square at about 25 miles will pound their quadriceps muscles to mush, making the final 385 yards into the finish line on Boylston Street not happy yards. "If I only had paced myself better," is the cry of defeated runners as they soak in tubs after returning to their hotels.
Among those recognizing the dangers that the Boston course presented was Carissa von Koch. She described the first mile as a crowded mile: "My plan was to start conservatively. I had no desire to weave through the crowds. Passing would have been impossible had I tried anyway. We were packed in tight."
So tight that von Koch failed to spot the sign signifying she had run one mile. Her watch, a Garmin Forerunner 305, beeped to alert her. Glancing at the screen, she was disappointed that the display screen showed a time of 7:58. She had hoped to run between 7:30 and 7:35 for the first half of the race. If her Garmin could be believed, she had lost nearly 30 seconds off her planned pace. More the bother, she had lost it on the steepest downhill of the entire 26.2-mile course! Von Koch quickly realized that, hemmed in by the crowds, she had no choice but to relax and accept the pace dictated by those surrounding her. Days later, when she posted her Boston memories to the Internet, von Koch had rationalized away those lost seconds:
"It's tempting to start the race and go out too fast on the downhill. This is hard on your legs and will come back to haunt you later in the race. I had been advised again and again to start out slow so I played it safe. The next few miles went smoothly. It was still really crowded, but the continued downhills allowed me to hit my paces."
Erica Greene also had been warned about the downhills by her coach Fred Treseler, who had spoken at a Sunday morning breakfast for the charity Team Eye and Ear. Treseler had offered two recommendations for the early miles:
- Start off slow.
- Do not let the crowd distract you from your pace.
As the runners surrounding Greene crossed the border between the towns of Hopkinton and Ashland at about two miles, those words of Treseler continued to echo in her ears.
Jen Marr described her thoughts during the first few miles in almost a stream-of-consciousness:
It was a hard race from the start.
Mile 1, a side ache:
Are you kidding me? Now?
I remembered from my training:
Blow it out hard.
Push against your ribs.
Don't think about it.
Blow it out some more.
Soon it was gone.
Heather Lee-Callaghan later would recall the spectators: "There were spectators lined completely on both sides, even in the early miles. We ran past kids with hands reaching out for high fives. I high-fived probably 25 people coasting down the first hill. I felt like a rock star."
Lee-Callaghan ran with an iPod, but did not even turn it on until past five miles. "There was enough music coming from off the course. I must have heard the theme from Rocky 20 times." Lee-Callaghan decided that the next time she ran Boston, she would leave her iPod back in the hotel.
She came to the 10-kilometer checkpoint, near the Framingham train depot. Lee-Callaghan knew that friends were tracking her times online, "so every time I saw a chip mat, I ran fast toward it and stomped on the mat." She did not know why. "Not like it would show my status quicker or faster." Her time at the 10-K checkpoint mats was 48:44, putting her far behind Rita Jeptoo and Shalane Flanagan, who had crossed the same mats together in 36:04 and 36:05.
It was approximately 11:12 a.m. when Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped the 10-K mat. At that same time of day, the lead women runners, given their head start, were into the Newton hills, closing on the 30-K mat. The women were in the same race, and yet they were not - but that did not concern Heather Lee-Callaghan. Slapping hands and listening to the music, she was having too much fun.
The hard running for her, and so many others, had not yet begun.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
4:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
04:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
Natick
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice.
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice. What had been Waverly Street becomes West Central Street, although the highway remains 135. After a slight rise and a curve so gentle they hardly notice it, runners pass Lake Cochituate. In addition to the cheering masses, fishermen can be seen standing by the side of the lake, trying their luck, oblivious to the commotion behind them, the staccato sound of soft-bottomed shoes pounding the pavement not being part of their attention span.
The 15-K checkpoint is beside the lake. Heather Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped another mat in 1:12:35. Far ahead, given their head start, the lead women were closing in on Kenmore Square, one mile to go. By then Rita Jeptoo had opened a 12-second lead on Shalane Flanagan, who had slipped to fourth place. Even with her fast track legs, it seemed unlikely that Shalane could reel Jeptoo in by the time they turned toward the finish line on Boylston Street.
For a brief period of time, at least until the moment Jeptoo crossed the finish line, every runner running the Boston Marathon was on the course together. Every single one of them! The 23,000 runners of Boston 2013 probably covered near 20 miles of road. They filled that road, like a snake slithering toward the sea.
Lee-Callaghan had no time to think about what part of the snake she might be. The Canadian runner was suffering a medical emergency. The top of her right shoe was soaked with blood. A burst blister! This had happened to her once before at the Fredericton Marathon in New Brunswick, Canada. Lee-Callaghan did not like blisters; she did not like blood. She knew she would need to deal with the growing crisis. But how?
Lee-Callaghan decided she had two choices:
-
Be totally stupid and continue, hoping for a PR, obsessing over her Garmin the whole way.
-
Stop at an aid station, bandage up, lose three to five minutes, but finish the race and have fun.
She chose the second option, running into an aid station just past the Natick Common, screaming: "I've got a bloody toe! I need a bandage!"
"Sit down," said the medic, trying to calm her.
Blogging later, the hyphenated runner would describe having a massive panic attack: "I'm taking off my running shoe and bloody sock watching hundreds of runners go by as the clock is ticking during the Boston Marathon!"
While the medic bandaged her toe, she noticed two other men and a woman sitting in the tent, Mylar blankets wrapped around their shoulders. "Neither looked like they intended to get back on the course. They told me I looked strong and wished me luck and said to keep going. I wished them well, thanked the volunteer and ran out of the tent like a bat out of hell."
Thoughts continued to boil within the head of Jen Marr:
Look around:
So many people.
Clapping,
Cheering,
Calling our names.
Kids, so many of them.
So cute.
Holding out licorice, water, jelly beans, oranges, ice,
And best of all, their hands.
"Take it all in," I kept repeating to myself.
High-five the kids.
Wave at the adults.
Thumbs-up to the people holding signs.
We were having fun.
Not everybody was having fun. As it always does, the toughest race on the World Marathon Majors calendar soon would take its toll from runners who might be said to have misbehaved, who perhaps had not trained as hard as planned, who had chosen a toofast pace, who became overwhelmed by the experience of Boston and forgot that they had come to race.
This included Amy Zebala. "The race was phenomenal. It was a gorgeous day: sunny, with temps in the high 40s to mid-50s. After the congested start, the course opened up. Into Natick, I was 5 to 10 seconds ahead of my planned pace, but I was holding back and felt everything was going well. The crowd was vocal, and the miles flew by.
"At about 10 miles, I began to have some tummy issues." Zebala eventually would need to take a bathroom break, but it cost her only a minute, and she was soon back on pace. Time flies when you're having fun.
Erica Greene found the Boston Marathon to be Amazing and Awesome: "The crowds were awesome. There were so many people. It was amazing, so therefore I was never able to settle into a rhythm, because everything was awesome!
"I was giving high fives, asking people if I was going the right way, and asking Team Girl Scouts, ‘Where are Thin Mints?' I was having a ball, but it began affecting my running. I hit a wall at Mile 11."
Mile 11, she said to herself. Really?
Aubrey Birzon Blanda ran wearing a bib that had been signed by Kathrine Switzer at the Expo. Switzer had been one of the earliest of women running Boston, and she remained a celebrity and role model among female runners. This was her 36th consecutive year working with the WBZ-TV team. Switzer also had signed Blanda's bib in 2010 and 2011, but Aubrey this year had struggled with hamstring problems during the last several weeks of training. Partly for that reason, she decided to accept the pace set by a man named Allan she had met walking to the starting line.
"Allan set a tough pace, and the hamstring felt good until Mile 10." It was then that Blanda realized the reason the hamstring didn't bother her was because every other muscle, down to her ankles, was shot. "Six miles to go to the Newton hills, and my quads were completely dead."
"I was trashed."
Tracy O'Hara McGuire, 37, a stay-at-home mom from Portland, Oregon, accepted the cheers of fans along the sidelines, feeling like a superstar: "Thousands of fans screaming your name, cheering you on, pushing you past your limits. It's simply magical."
But as McGuire later would admit, coming through Framingham and into Natick, "the wheels began to fall off." Her stomach felt full. Her head felt dizzy. She started to feel nauseous - and she still had more than half the marathon to run. McGuire decided she had been drinking too much water, so she threw away the bottle she had been carrying.
Carissa von Koch struggled as she passed Mile 11 and approached the town of Wellesley. Her stomach was upset, and she needed a bathroom break, but someone was ahead of her in line, so she kept running, then she changed her mind and turned back. Once inside the porta potty, she heard her watch beep into auto pause mode. At that point, she knew she had lost track of her overall time.
"I stepped out of the bathroom feeling defeated. I thought of all my friends who were running the marathon just to soak up the atmosphere. I wanted to join them, but here I was stuck in the middle: not running fast, but not running for fun, either. I thought of everybody back home checking my progress online. They would feel concerned for me when they realized I was not hitting my pace goals."
Von Koch went back to doing the only option left her: Carrying on despite it all, running smart, conserving energy, and taking what the legs would give her that day.
Michele Keane felt a wave of nostalgia hit her as she passed through downtown Natick. She spotted a restaurant, formerly an ice cream spot when she was growing up. And then she saw her mother, Jean Collette, standing there as always, waving, cheering, shouting, "Michele! Michele!" This was their spot. Her mother still lived in their old house. Michele remembered how, when she was a girl, she and Mom would hand cups of water to passing runners. She stopped for a drink that was as much celebratory as refreshing.
Then she kissed Mom and kept running.
Jessica Reed, 37, a registered dietitian from Athens, Ohio, entered Boston with anticipation that could, at best, be described as lukewarm: "After doing Ironman, I didn't think Boston was such a big whoop." The cheers of the crowd changed her mind. Never in any of the triathlons she had run had Reed encountered such crowd support. That plus the signs many of the spectators held.
"You Are Not Almost There!"
"Toenails Are For Wusses!"
"26.2: Because 26.3 Would Be CRAZY!"
John Munro also was amazed by the energy flowing from everyone standing by the side of the road: "These weren't spectators, they were supporters, who screamed their heads off, who waved funny placards, who said something like, ˜That isn't sweat, it's awesome leaking out.' These were supporters who screamed so loudly at Wellesley College, you could hear them a half-mile before you saw them."
The half-marathon was just past Wellesley College in the town of the same name. The belly of the snake had now reached that point in the Boston Marathon.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
The Ashland Hills
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners.
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners. The challenge comes from the downhill tilt of these early miles. Boston is a downhill course, dropping from 462 feet above sea level on the starting line to 16 feet above sea level on the final run-in at Boylston Street. Among the steepest areas is the first half-mile, nearly a 150-foot drop in elevation, almost a toboggan slide that can get runners in trouble if they run the slide too fast. As much a problem are the several miles continuing from Hopkinton through Ashland and into Framingham: rolling, but rolling more downhill than uphill. Suddenly, runners find themselves moving way faster than their planned pace, a serious tactical mistake for anyone hopeful of running a time equal to or faster than their BQ, the qualifying time that had gotten them into the 2013 Boston Marathon.
Checking their watches at Ashland, smart runners realize this and throttle back, saving energy for the challenging uphill miles to come later, particularly the four hills that culminate with Heartbreak Hill in Newton. Or maybe they do not recognize their mistake until Framingham. Or maybe Newton, by which time it is too late. They are cooked. The four Newton hills will destroy them. And if not then, the subtle downhill from Cleveland Circle at about 22 miles to Kenmore Square at about 25 miles will pound their quadriceps muscles to mush, making the final 385 yards into the finish line on Boylston Street not happy yards. "If I only had paced myself better," is the cry of defeated runners as they soak in tubs after returning to their hotels.
Among those recognizing the dangers that the Boston course presented was Carissa von Koch. She described the first mile as a crowded mile: "My plan was to start conservatively. I had no desire to weave through the crowds. Passing would have been impossible had I tried anyway. We were packed in tight."
So tight that von Koch failed to spot the sign signifying she had run one mile. Her watch, a Garmin Forerunner 305, beeped to alert her. Glancing at the screen, she was disappointed that the display screen showed a time of 7:58. She had hoped to run between 7:30 and 7:35 for the first half of the race. If her Garmin could be believed, she had lost nearly 30 seconds off her planned pace. More the bother, she had lost it on the steepest downhill of the entire 26.2-mile course! Von Koch quickly realized that, hemmed in by the crowds, she had no choice but to relax and accept the pace dictated by those surrounding her. Days later, when she posted her Boston memories to the Internet, von Koch had rationalized away those lost seconds:
"It's tempting to start the race and go out too fast on the downhill. This is hard on your legs and will come back to haunt you later in the race. I had been advised again and again to start out slow so I played it safe. The next few miles went smoothly. It was still really crowded, but the continued downhills allowed me to hit my paces."
Erica Greene also had been warned about the downhills by her coach Fred Treseler, who had spoken at a Sunday morning breakfast for the charity Team Eye and Ear. Treseler had offered two recommendations for the early miles:
- Start off slow.
- Do not let the crowd distract you from your pace.
As the runners surrounding Greene crossed the border between the towns of Hopkinton and Ashland at about two miles, those words of Treseler continued to echo in her ears.
Jen Marr described her thoughts during the first few miles in almost a stream-of-consciousness:
It was a hard race from the start.
Mile 1, a side ache:
Are you kidding me? Now?
I remembered from my training:
Blow it out hard.
Push against your ribs.
Don't think about it.
Blow it out some more.
Soon it was gone.
Heather Lee-Callaghan later would recall the spectators: "There were spectators lined completely on both sides, even in the early miles. We ran past kids with hands reaching out for high fives. I high-fived probably 25 people coasting down the first hill. I felt like a rock star."
Lee-Callaghan ran with an iPod, but did not even turn it on until past five miles. "There was enough music coming from off the course. I must have heard the theme from Rocky 20 times." Lee-Callaghan decided that the next time she ran Boston, she would leave her iPod back in the hotel.
She came to the 10-kilometer checkpoint, near the Framingham train depot. Lee-Callaghan knew that friends were tracking her times online, "so every time I saw a chip mat, I ran fast toward it and stomped on the mat." She did not know why. "Not like it would show my status quicker or faster." Her time at the 10-K checkpoint mats was 48:44, putting her far behind Rita Jeptoo and Shalane Flanagan, who had crossed the same mats together in 36:04 and 36:05.
It was approximately 11:12 a.m. when Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped the 10-K mat. At that same time of day, the lead women runners, given their head start, were into the Newton hills, closing on the 30-K mat. The women were in the same race, and yet they were not - but that did not concern Heather Lee-Callaghan. Slapping hands and listening to the music, she was having too much fun.
The hard running for her, and so many others, had not yet begun.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
4:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
04:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
Natick
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice.
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice. What had been Waverly Street becomes West Central Street, although the highway remains 135. After a slight rise and a curve so gentle they hardly notice it, runners pass Lake Cochituate. In addition to the cheering masses, fishermen can be seen standing by the side of the lake, trying their luck, oblivious to the commotion behind them, the staccato sound of soft-bottomed shoes pounding the pavement not being part of their attention span.
The 15-K checkpoint is beside the lake. Heather Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped another mat in 1:12:35. Far ahead, given their head start, the lead women were closing in on Kenmore Square, one mile to go. By then Rita Jeptoo had opened a 12-second lead on Shalane Flanagan, who had slipped to fourth place. Even with her fast track legs, it seemed unlikely that Shalane could reel Jeptoo in by the time they turned toward the finish line on Boylston Street.
For a brief period of time, at least until the moment Jeptoo crossed the finish line, every runner running the Boston Marathon was on the course together. Every single one of them! The 23,000 runners of Boston 2013 probably covered near 20 miles of road. They filled that road, like a snake slithering toward the sea.
Lee-Callaghan had no time to think about what part of the snake she might be. The Canadian runner was suffering a medical emergency. The top of her right shoe was soaked with blood. A burst blister! This had happened to her once before at the Fredericton Marathon in New Brunswick, Canada. Lee-Callaghan did not like blisters; she did not like blood. She knew she would need to deal with the growing crisis. But how?
Lee-Callaghan decided she had two choices:
-
Be totally stupid and continue, hoping for a PR, obsessing over her Garmin the whole way.
-
Stop at an aid station, bandage up, lose three to five minutes, but finish the race and have fun.
She chose the second option, running into an aid station just past the Natick Common, screaming: "I've got a bloody toe! I need a bandage!"
"Sit down," said the medic, trying to calm her.
Blogging later, the hyphenated runner would describe having a massive panic attack: "I'm taking off my running shoe and bloody sock watching hundreds of runners go by as the clock is ticking during the Boston Marathon!"
While the medic bandaged her toe, she noticed two other men and a woman sitting in the tent, Mylar blankets wrapped around their shoulders. "Neither looked like they intended to get back on the course. They told me I looked strong and wished me luck and said to keep going. I wished them well, thanked the volunteer and ran out of the tent like a bat out of hell."
Thoughts continued to boil within the head of Jen Marr:
Look around:
So many people.
Clapping,
Cheering,
Calling our names.
Kids, so many of them.
So cute.
Holding out licorice, water, jelly beans, oranges, ice,
And best of all, their hands.
"Take it all in," I kept repeating to myself.
High-five the kids.
Wave at the adults.
Thumbs-up to the people holding signs.
We were having fun.
Not everybody was having fun. As it always does, the toughest race on the World Marathon Majors calendar soon would take its toll from runners who might be said to have misbehaved, who perhaps had not trained as hard as planned, who had chosen a toofast pace, who became overwhelmed by the experience of Boston and forgot that they had come to race.
This included Amy Zebala. "The race was phenomenal. It was a gorgeous day: sunny, with temps in the high 40s to mid-50s. After the congested start, the course opened up. Into Natick, I was 5 to 10 seconds ahead of my planned pace, but I was holding back and felt everything was going well. The crowd was vocal, and the miles flew by.
"At about 10 miles, I began to have some tummy issues." Zebala eventually would need to take a bathroom break, but it cost her only a minute, and she was soon back on pace. Time flies when you're having fun.
Erica Greene found the Boston Marathon to be Amazing and Awesome: "The crowds were awesome. There were so many people. It was amazing, so therefore I was never able to settle into a rhythm, because everything was awesome!
"I was giving high fives, asking people if I was going the right way, and asking Team Girl Scouts, ‘Where are Thin Mints?' I was having a ball, but it began affecting my running. I hit a wall at Mile 11."
Mile 11, she said to herself. Really?
Aubrey Birzon Blanda ran wearing a bib that had been signed by Kathrine Switzer at the Expo. Switzer had been one of the earliest of women running Boston, and she remained a celebrity and role model among female runners. This was her 36th consecutive year working with the WBZ-TV team. Switzer also had signed Blanda's bib in 2010 and 2011, but Aubrey this year had struggled with hamstring problems during the last several weeks of training. Partly for that reason, she decided to accept the pace set by a man named Allan she had met walking to the starting line.
"Allan set a tough pace, and the hamstring felt good until Mile 10." It was then that Blanda realized the reason the hamstring didn't bother her was because every other muscle, down to her ankles, was shot. "Six miles to go to the Newton hills, and my quads were completely dead."
"I was trashed."
Tracy O'Hara McGuire, 37, a stay-at-home mom from Portland, Oregon, accepted the cheers of fans along the sidelines, feeling like a superstar: "Thousands of fans screaming your name, cheering you on, pushing you past your limits. It's simply magical."
But as McGuire later would admit, coming through Framingham and into Natick, "the wheels began to fall off." Her stomach felt full. Her head felt dizzy. She started to feel nauseous - and she still had more than half the marathon to run. McGuire decided she had been drinking too much water, so she threw away the bottle she had been carrying.
Carissa von Koch struggled as she passed Mile 11 and approached the town of Wellesley. Her stomach was upset, and she needed a bathroom break, but someone was ahead of her in line, so she kept running, then she changed her mind and turned back. Once inside the porta potty, she heard her watch beep into auto pause mode. At that point, she knew she had lost track of her overall time.
"I stepped out of the bathroom feeling defeated. I thought of all my friends who were running the marathon just to soak up the atmosphere. I wanted to join them, but here I was stuck in the middle: not running fast, but not running for fun, either. I thought of everybody back home checking my progress online. They would feel concerned for me when they realized I was not hitting my pace goals."
Von Koch went back to doing the only option left her: Carrying on despite it all, running smart, conserving energy, and taking what the legs would give her that day.
Michele Keane felt a wave of nostalgia hit her as she passed through downtown Natick. She spotted a restaurant, formerly an ice cream spot when she was growing up. And then she saw her mother, Jean Collette, standing there as always, waving, cheering, shouting, "Michele! Michele!" This was their spot. Her mother still lived in their old house. Michele remembered how, when she was a girl, she and Mom would hand cups of water to passing runners. She stopped for a drink that was as much celebratory as refreshing.
Then she kissed Mom and kept running.
Jessica Reed, 37, a registered dietitian from Athens, Ohio, entered Boston with anticipation that could, at best, be described as lukewarm: "After doing Ironman, I didn't think Boston was such a big whoop." The cheers of the crowd changed her mind. Never in any of the triathlons she had run had Reed encountered such crowd support. That plus the signs many of the spectators held.
"You Are Not Almost There!"
"Toenails Are For Wusses!"
"26.2: Because 26.3 Would Be CRAZY!"
John Munro also was amazed by the energy flowing from everyone standing by the side of the road: "These weren't spectators, they were supporters, who screamed their heads off, who waved funny placards, who said something like, ˜That isn't sweat, it's awesome leaking out.' These were supporters who screamed so loudly at Wellesley College, you could hear them a half-mile before you saw them."
The half-marathon was just past Wellesley College in the town of the same name. The belly of the snake had now reached that point in the Boston Marathon.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
The Ashland Hills
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners.
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners. The challenge comes from the downhill tilt of these early miles. Boston is a downhill course, dropping from 462 feet above sea level on the starting line to 16 feet above sea level on the final run-in at Boylston Street. Among the steepest areas is the first half-mile, nearly a 150-foot drop in elevation, almost a toboggan slide that can get runners in trouble if they run the slide too fast. As much a problem are the several miles continuing from Hopkinton through Ashland and into Framingham: rolling, but rolling more downhill than uphill. Suddenly, runners find themselves moving way faster than their planned pace, a serious tactical mistake for anyone hopeful of running a time equal to or faster than their BQ, the qualifying time that had gotten them into the 2013 Boston Marathon.
Checking their watches at Ashland, smart runners realize this and throttle back, saving energy for the challenging uphill miles to come later, particularly the four hills that culminate with Heartbreak Hill in Newton. Or maybe they do not recognize their mistake until Framingham. Or maybe Newton, by which time it is too late. They are cooked. The four Newton hills will destroy them. And if not then, the subtle downhill from Cleveland Circle at about 22 miles to Kenmore Square at about 25 miles will pound their quadriceps muscles to mush, making the final 385 yards into the finish line on Boylston Street not happy yards. "If I only had paced myself better," is the cry of defeated runners as they soak in tubs after returning to their hotels.
Among those recognizing the dangers that the Boston course presented was Carissa von Koch. She described the first mile as a crowded mile: "My plan was to start conservatively. I had no desire to weave through the crowds. Passing would have been impossible had I tried anyway. We were packed in tight."
So tight that von Koch failed to spot the sign signifying she had run one mile. Her watch, a Garmin Forerunner 305, beeped to alert her. Glancing at the screen, she was disappointed that the display screen showed a time of 7:58. She had hoped to run between 7:30 and 7:35 for the first half of the race. If her Garmin could be believed, she had lost nearly 30 seconds off her planned pace. More the bother, she had lost it on the steepest downhill of the entire 26.2-mile course! Von Koch quickly realized that, hemmed in by the crowds, she had no choice but to relax and accept the pace dictated by those surrounding her. Days later, when she posted her Boston memories to the Internet, von Koch had rationalized away those lost seconds:
"It's tempting to start the race and go out too fast on the downhill. This is hard on your legs and will come back to haunt you later in the race. I had been advised again and again to start out slow so I played it safe. The next few miles went smoothly. It was still really crowded, but the continued downhills allowed me to hit my paces."
Erica Greene also had been warned about the downhills by her coach Fred Treseler, who had spoken at a Sunday morning breakfast for the charity Team Eye and Ear. Treseler had offered two recommendations for the early miles:
- Start off slow.
- Do not let the crowd distract you from your pace.
As the runners surrounding Greene crossed the border between the towns of Hopkinton and Ashland at about two miles, those words of Treseler continued to echo in her ears.
Jen Marr described her thoughts during the first few miles in almost a stream-of-consciousness:
It was a hard race from the start.
Mile 1, a side ache:
Are you kidding me? Now?
I remembered from my training:
Blow it out hard.
Push against your ribs.
Don't think about it.
Blow it out some more.
Soon it was gone.
Heather Lee-Callaghan later would recall the spectators: "There were spectators lined completely on both sides, even in the early miles. We ran past kids with hands reaching out for high fives. I high-fived probably 25 people coasting down the first hill. I felt like a rock star."
Lee-Callaghan ran with an iPod, but did not even turn it on until past five miles. "There was enough music coming from off the course. I must have heard the theme from Rocky 20 times." Lee-Callaghan decided that the next time she ran Boston, she would leave her iPod back in the hotel.
She came to the 10-kilometer checkpoint, near the Framingham train depot. Lee-Callaghan knew that friends were tracking her times online, "so every time I saw a chip mat, I ran fast toward it and stomped on the mat." She did not know why. "Not like it would show my status quicker or faster." Her time at the 10-K checkpoint mats was 48:44, putting her far behind Rita Jeptoo and Shalane Flanagan, who had crossed the same mats together in 36:04 and 36:05.
It was approximately 11:12 a.m. when Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped the 10-K mat. At that same time of day, the lead women runners, given their head start, were into the Newton hills, closing on the 30-K mat. The women were in the same race, and yet they were not - but that did not concern Heather Lee-Callaghan. Slapping hands and listening to the music, she was having too much fun.
The hard running for her, and so many others, had not yet begun.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
4:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
04:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
Natick
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice.
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice. What had been Waverly Street becomes West Central Street, although the highway remains 135. After a slight rise and a curve so gentle they hardly notice it, runners pass Lake Cochituate. In addition to the cheering masses, fishermen can be seen standing by the side of the lake, trying their luck, oblivious to the commotion behind them, the staccato sound of soft-bottomed shoes pounding the pavement not being part of their attention span.
The 15-K checkpoint is beside the lake. Heather Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped another mat in 1:12:35. Far ahead, given their head start, the lead women were closing in on Kenmore Square, one mile to go. By then Rita Jeptoo had opened a 12-second lead on Shalane Flanagan, who had slipped to fourth place. Even with her fast track legs, it seemed unlikely that Shalane could reel Jeptoo in by the time they turned toward the finish line on Boylston Street.
For a brief period of time, at least until the moment Jeptoo crossed the finish line, every runner running the Boston Marathon was on the course together. Every single one of them! The 23,000 runners of Boston 2013 probably covered near 20 miles of road. They filled that road, like a snake slithering toward the sea.
Lee-Callaghan had no time to think about what part of the snake she might be. The Canadian runner was suffering a medical emergency. The top of her right shoe was soaked with blood. A burst blister! This had happened to her once before at the Fredericton Marathon in New Brunswick, Canada. Lee-Callaghan did not like blisters; she did not like blood. She knew she would need to deal with the growing crisis. But how?
Lee-Callaghan decided she had two choices:
-
Be totally stupid and continue, hoping for a PR, obsessing over her Garmin the whole way.
-
Stop at an aid station, bandage up, lose three to five minutes, but finish the race and have fun.
She chose the second option, running into an aid station just past the Natick Common, screaming: "I've got a bloody toe! I need a bandage!"
"Sit down," said the medic, trying to calm her.
Blogging later, the hyphenated runner would describe having a massive panic attack: "I'm taking off my running shoe and bloody sock watching hundreds of runners go by as the clock is ticking during the Boston Marathon!"
While the medic bandaged her toe, she noticed two other men and a woman sitting in the tent, Mylar blankets wrapped around their shoulders. "Neither looked like they intended to get back on the course. They told me I looked strong and wished me luck and said to keep going. I wished them well, thanked the volunteer and ran out of the tent like a bat out of hell."
Thoughts continued to boil within the head of Jen Marr:
Look around:
So many people.
Clapping,
Cheering,
Calling our names.
Kids, so many of them.
So cute.
Holding out licorice, water, jelly beans, oranges, ice,
And best of all, their hands.
"Take it all in," I kept repeating to myself.
High-five the kids.
Wave at the adults.
Thumbs-up to the people holding signs.
We were having fun.
Not everybody was having fun. As it always does, the toughest race on the World Marathon Majors calendar soon would take its toll from runners who might be said to have misbehaved, who perhaps had not trained as hard as planned, who had chosen a toofast pace, who became overwhelmed by the experience of Boston and forgot that they had come to race.
This included Amy Zebala. "The race was phenomenal. It was a gorgeous day: sunny, with temps in the high 40s to mid-50s. After the congested start, the course opened up. Into Natick, I was 5 to 10 seconds ahead of my planned pace, but I was holding back and felt everything was going well. The crowd was vocal, and the miles flew by.
"At about 10 miles, I began to have some tummy issues." Zebala eventually would need to take a bathroom break, but it cost her only a minute, and she was soon back on pace. Time flies when you're having fun.
Erica Greene found the Boston Marathon to be Amazing and Awesome: "The crowds were awesome. There were so many people. It was amazing, so therefore I was never able to settle into a rhythm, because everything was awesome!
"I was giving high fives, asking people if I was going the right way, and asking Team Girl Scouts, ‘Where are Thin Mints?' I was having a ball, but it began affecting my running. I hit a wall at Mile 11."
Mile 11, she said to herself. Really?
Aubrey Birzon Blanda ran wearing a bib that had been signed by Kathrine Switzer at the Expo. Switzer had been one of the earliest of women running Boston, and she remained a celebrity and role model among female runners. This was her 36th consecutive year working with the WBZ-TV team. Switzer also had signed Blanda's bib in 2010 and 2011, but Aubrey this year had struggled with hamstring problems during the last several weeks of training. Partly for that reason, she decided to accept the pace set by a man named Allan she had met walking to the starting line.
"Allan set a tough pace, and the hamstring felt good until Mile 10." It was then that Blanda realized the reason the hamstring didn't bother her was because every other muscle, down to her ankles, was shot. "Six miles to go to the Newton hills, and my quads were completely dead."
"I was trashed."
Tracy O'Hara McGuire, 37, a stay-at-home mom from Portland, Oregon, accepted the cheers of fans along the sidelines, feeling like a superstar: "Thousands of fans screaming your name, cheering you on, pushing you past your limits. It's simply magical."
But as McGuire later would admit, coming through Framingham and into Natick, "the wheels began to fall off." Her stomach felt full. Her head felt dizzy. She started to feel nauseous - and she still had more than half the marathon to run. McGuire decided she had been drinking too much water, so she threw away the bottle she had been carrying.
Carissa von Koch struggled as she passed Mile 11 and approached the town of Wellesley. Her stomach was upset, and she needed a bathroom break, but someone was ahead of her in line, so she kept running, then she changed her mind and turned back. Once inside the porta potty, she heard her watch beep into auto pause mode. At that point, she knew she had lost track of her overall time.
"I stepped out of the bathroom feeling defeated. I thought of all my friends who were running the marathon just to soak up the atmosphere. I wanted to join them, but here I was stuck in the middle: not running fast, but not running for fun, either. I thought of everybody back home checking my progress online. They would feel concerned for me when they realized I was not hitting my pace goals."
Von Koch went back to doing the only option left her: Carrying on despite it all, running smart, conserving energy, and taking what the legs would give her that day.
Michele Keane felt a wave of nostalgia hit her as she passed through downtown Natick. She spotted a restaurant, formerly an ice cream spot when she was growing up. And then she saw her mother, Jean Collette, standing there as always, waving, cheering, shouting, "Michele! Michele!" This was their spot. Her mother still lived in their old house. Michele remembered how, when she was a girl, she and Mom would hand cups of water to passing runners. She stopped for a drink that was as much celebratory as refreshing.
Then she kissed Mom and kept running.
Jessica Reed, 37, a registered dietitian from Athens, Ohio, entered Boston with anticipation that could, at best, be described as lukewarm: "After doing Ironman, I didn't think Boston was such a big whoop." The cheers of the crowd changed her mind. Never in any of the triathlons she had run had Reed encountered such crowd support. That plus the signs many of the spectators held.
"You Are Not Almost There!"
"Toenails Are For Wusses!"
"26.2: Because 26.3 Would Be CRAZY!"
John Munro also was amazed by the energy flowing from everyone standing by the side of the road: "These weren't spectators, they were supporters, who screamed their heads off, who waved funny placards, who said something like, ˜That isn't sweat, it's awesome leaking out.' These were supporters who screamed so loudly at Wellesley College, you could hear them a half-mile before you saw them."
The half-marathon was just past Wellesley College in the town of the same name. The belly of the snake had now reached that point in the Boston Marathon.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
The Ashland Hills
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners.
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners. The challenge comes from the downhill tilt of these early miles. Boston is a downhill course, dropping from 462 feet above sea level on the starting line to 16 feet above sea level on the final run-in at Boylston Street. Among the steepest areas is the first half-mile, nearly a 150-foot drop in elevation, almost a toboggan slide that can get runners in trouble if they run the slide too fast. As much a problem are the several miles continuing from Hopkinton through Ashland and into Framingham: rolling, but rolling more downhill than uphill. Suddenly, runners find themselves moving way faster than their planned pace, a serious tactical mistake for anyone hopeful of running a time equal to or faster than their BQ, the qualifying time that had gotten them into the 2013 Boston Marathon.
Checking their watches at Ashland, smart runners realize this and throttle back, saving energy for the challenging uphill miles to come later, particularly the four hills that culminate with Heartbreak Hill in Newton. Or maybe they do not recognize their mistake until Framingham. Or maybe Newton, by which time it is too late. They are cooked. The four Newton hills will destroy them. And if not then, the subtle downhill from Cleveland Circle at about 22 miles to Kenmore Square at about 25 miles will pound their quadriceps muscles to mush, making the final 385 yards into the finish line on Boylston Street not happy yards. "If I only had paced myself better," is the cry of defeated runners as they soak in tubs after returning to their hotels.
Among those recognizing the dangers that the Boston course presented was Carissa von Koch. She described the first mile as a crowded mile: "My plan was to start conservatively. I had no desire to weave through the crowds. Passing would have been impossible had I tried anyway. We were packed in tight."
So tight that von Koch failed to spot the sign signifying she had run one mile. Her watch, a Garmin Forerunner 305, beeped to alert her. Glancing at the screen, she was disappointed that the display screen showed a time of 7:58. She had hoped to run between 7:30 and 7:35 for the first half of the race. If her Garmin could be believed, she had lost nearly 30 seconds off her planned pace. More the bother, she had lost it on the steepest downhill of the entire 26.2-mile course! Von Koch quickly realized that, hemmed in by the crowds, she had no choice but to relax and accept the pace dictated by those surrounding her. Days later, when she posted her Boston memories to the Internet, von Koch had rationalized away those lost seconds:
"It's tempting to start the race and go out too fast on the downhill. This is hard on your legs and will come back to haunt you later in the race. I had been advised again and again to start out slow so I played it safe. The next few miles went smoothly. It was still really crowded, but the continued downhills allowed me to hit my paces."
Erica Greene also had been warned about the downhills by her coach Fred Treseler, who had spoken at a Sunday morning breakfast for the charity Team Eye and Ear. Treseler had offered two recommendations for the early miles:
- Start off slow.
- Do not let the crowd distract you from your pace.
As the runners surrounding Greene crossed the border between the towns of Hopkinton and Ashland at about two miles, those words of Treseler continued to echo in her ears.
Jen Marr described her thoughts during the first few miles in almost a stream-of-consciousness:
It was a hard race from the start.
Mile 1, a side ache:
Are you kidding me? Now?
I remembered from my training:
Blow it out hard.
Push against your ribs.
Don't think about it.
Blow it out some more.
Soon it was gone.
Heather Lee-Callaghan later would recall the spectators: "There were spectators lined completely on both sides, even in the early miles. We ran past kids with hands reaching out for high fives. I high-fived probably 25 people coasting down the first hill. I felt like a rock star."
Lee-Callaghan ran with an iPod, but did not even turn it on until past five miles. "There was enough music coming from off the course. I must have heard the theme from Rocky 20 times." Lee-Callaghan decided that the next time she ran Boston, she would leave her iPod back in the hotel.
She came to the 10-kilometer checkpoint, near the Framingham train depot. Lee-Callaghan knew that friends were tracking her times online, "so every time I saw a chip mat, I ran fast toward it and stomped on the mat." She did not know why. "Not like it would show my status quicker or faster." Her time at the 10-K checkpoint mats was 48:44, putting her far behind Rita Jeptoo and Shalane Flanagan, who had crossed the same mats together in 36:04 and 36:05.
It was approximately 11:12 a.m. when Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped the 10-K mat. At that same time of day, the lead women runners, given their head start, were into the Newton hills, closing on the 30-K mat. The women were in the same race, and yet they were not - but that did not concern Heather Lee-Callaghan. Slapping hands and listening to the music, she was having too much fun.
The hard running for her, and so many others, had not yet begun.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
4:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
04:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
Natick
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice.
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice. What had been Waverly Street becomes West Central Street, although the highway remains 135. After a slight rise and a curve so gentle they hardly notice it, runners pass Lake Cochituate. In addition to the cheering masses, fishermen can be seen standing by the side of the lake, trying their luck, oblivious to the commotion behind them, the staccato sound of soft-bottomed shoes pounding the pavement not being part of their attention span.
The 15-K checkpoint is beside the lake. Heather Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped another mat in 1:12:35. Far ahead, given their head start, the lead women were closing in on Kenmore Square, one mile to go. By then Rita Jeptoo had opened a 12-second lead on Shalane Flanagan, who had slipped to fourth place. Even with her fast track legs, it seemed unlikely that Shalane could reel Jeptoo in by the time they turned toward the finish line on Boylston Street.
For a brief period of time, at least until the moment Jeptoo crossed the finish line, every runner running the Boston Marathon was on the course together. Every single one of them! The 23,000 runners of Boston 2013 probably covered near 20 miles of road. They filled that road, like a snake slithering toward the sea.
Lee-Callaghan had no time to think about what part of the snake she might be. The Canadian runner was suffering a medical emergency. The top of her right shoe was soaked with blood. A burst blister! This had happened to her once before at the Fredericton Marathon in New Brunswick, Canada. Lee-Callaghan did not like blisters; she did not like blood. She knew she would need to deal with the growing crisis. But how?
Lee-Callaghan decided she had two choices:
-
Be totally stupid and continue, hoping for a PR, obsessing over her Garmin the whole way.
-
Stop at an aid station, bandage up, lose three to five minutes, but finish the race and have fun.
She chose the second option, running into an aid station just past the Natick Common, screaming: "I've got a bloody toe! I need a bandage!"
"Sit down," said the medic, trying to calm her.
Blogging later, the hyphenated runner would describe having a massive panic attack: "I'm taking off my running shoe and bloody sock watching hundreds of runners go by as the clock is ticking during the Boston Marathon!"
While the medic bandaged her toe, she noticed two other men and a woman sitting in the tent, Mylar blankets wrapped around their shoulders. "Neither looked like they intended to get back on the course. They told me I looked strong and wished me luck and said to keep going. I wished them well, thanked the volunteer and ran out of the tent like a bat out of hell."
Thoughts continued to boil within the head of Jen Marr:
Look around:
So many people.
Clapping,
Cheering,
Calling our names.
Kids, so many of them.
So cute.
Holding out licorice, water, jelly beans, oranges, ice,
And best of all, their hands.
"Take it all in," I kept repeating to myself.
High-five the kids.
Wave at the adults.
Thumbs-up to the people holding signs.
We were having fun.
Not everybody was having fun. As it always does, the toughest race on the World Marathon Majors calendar soon would take its toll from runners who might be said to have misbehaved, who perhaps had not trained as hard as planned, who had chosen a toofast pace, who became overwhelmed by the experience of Boston and forgot that they had come to race.
This included Amy Zebala. "The race was phenomenal. It was a gorgeous day: sunny, with temps in the high 40s to mid-50s. After the congested start, the course opened up. Into Natick, I was 5 to 10 seconds ahead of my planned pace, but I was holding back and felt everything was going well. The crowd was vocal, and the miles flew by.
"At about 10 miles, I began to have some tummy issues." Zebala eventually would need to take a bathroom break, but it cost her only a minute, and she was soon back on pace. Time flies when you're having fun.
Erica Greene found the Boston Marathon to be Amazing and Awesome: "The crowds were awesome. There were so many people. It was amazing, so therefore I was never able to settle into a rhythm, because everything was awesome!
"I was giving high fives, asking people if I was going the right way, and asking Team Girl Scouts, ‘Where are Thin Mints?' I was having a ball, but it began affecting my running. I hit a wall at Mile 11."
Mile 11, she said to herself. Really?
Aubrey Birzon Blanda ran wearing a bib that had been signed by Kathrine Switzer at the Expo. Switzer had been one of the earliest of women running Boston, and she remained a celebrity and role model among female runners. This was her 36th consecutive year working with the WBZ-TV team. Switzer also had signed Blanda's bib in 2010 and 2011, but Aubrey this year had struggled with hamstring problems during the last several weeks of training. Partly for that reason, she decided to accept the pace set by a man named Allan she had met walking to the starting line.
"Allan set a tough pace, and the hamstring felt good until Mile 10." It was then that Blanda realized the reason the hamstring didn't bother her was because every other muscle, down to her ankles, was shot. "Six miles to go to the Newton hills, and my quads were completely dead."
"I was trashed."
Tracy O'Hara McGuire, 37, a stay-at-home mom from Portland, Oregon, accepted the cheers of fans along the sidelines, feeling like a superstar: "Thousands of fans screaming your name, cheering you on, pushing you past your limits. It's simply magical."
But as McGuire later would admit, coming through Framingham and into Natick, "the wheels began to fall off." Her stomach felt full. Her head felt dizzy. She started to feel nauseous - and she still had more than half the marathon to run. McGuire decided she had been drinking too much water, so she threw away the bottle she had been carrying.
Carissa von Koch struggled as she passed Mile 11 and approached the town of Wellesley. Her stomach was upset, and she needed a bathroom break, but someone was ahead of her in line, so she kept running, then she changed her mind and turned back. Once inside the porta potty, she heard her watch beep into auto pause mode. At that point, she knew she had lost track of her overall time.
"I stepped out of the bathroom feeling defeated. I thought of all my friends who were running the marathon just to soak up the atmosphere. I wanted to join them, but here I was stuck in the middle: not running fast, but not running for fun, either. I thought of everybody back home checking my progress online. They would feel concerned for me when they realized I was not hitting my pace goals."
Von Koch went back to doing the only option left her: Carrying on despite it all, running smart, conserving energy, and taking what the legs would give her that day.
Michele Keane felt a wave of nostalgia hit her as she passed through downtown Natick. She spotted a restaurant, formerly an ice cream spot when she was growing up. And then she saw her mother, Jean Collette, standing there as always, waving, cheering, shouting, "Michele! Michele!" This was their spot. Her mother still lived in their old house. Michele remembered how, when she was a girl, she and Mom would hand cups of water to passing runners. She stopped for a drink that was as much celebratory as refreshing.
Then she kissed Mom and kept running.
Jessica Reed, 37, a registered dietitian from Athens, Ohio, entered Boston with anticipation that could, at best, be described as lukewarm: "After doing Ironman, I didn't think Boston was such a big whoop." The cheers of the crowd changed her mind. Never in any of the triathlons she had run had Reed encountered such crowd support. That plus the signs many of the spectators held.
"You Are Not Almost There!"
"Toenails Are For Wusses!"
"26.2: Because 26.3 Would Be CRAZY!"
John Munro also was amazed by the energy flowing from everyone standing by the side of the road: "These weren't spectators, they were supporters, who screamed their heads off, who waved funny placards, who said something like, ˜That isn't sweat, it's awesome leaking out.' These were supporters who screamed so loudly at Wellesley College, you could hear them a half-mile before you saw them."
The half-marathon was just past Wellesley College in the town of the same name. The belly of the snake had now reached that point in the Boston Marathon.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
The Ashland Hills
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners.
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners. The challenge comes from the downhill tilt of these early miles. Boston is a downhill course, dropping from 462 feet above sea level on the starting line to 16 feet above sea level on the final run-in at Boylston Street. Among the steepest areas is the first half-mile, nearly a 150-foot drop in elevation, almost a toboggan slide that can get runners in trouble if they run the slide too fast. As much a problem are the several miles continuing from Hopkinton through Ashland and into Framingham: rolling, but rolling more downhill than uphill. Suddenly, runners find themselves moving way faster than their planned pace, a serious tactical mistake for anyone hopeful of running a time equal to or faster than their BQ, the qualifying time that had gotten them into the 2013 Boston Marathon.
Checking their watches at Ashland, smart runners realize this and throttle back, saving energy for the challenging uphill miles to come later, particularly the four hills that culminate with Heartbreak Hill in Newton. Or maybe they do not recognize their mistake until Framingham. Or maybe Newton, by which time it is too late. They are cooked. The four Newton hills will destroy them. And if not then, the subtle downhill from Cleveland Circle at about 22 miles to Kenmore Square at about 25 miles will pound their quadriceps muscles to mush, making the final 385 yards into the finish line on Boylston Street not happy yards. "If I only had paced myself better," is the cry of defeated runners as they soak in tubs after returning to their hotels.
Among those recognizing the dangers that the Boston course presented was Carissa von Koch. She described the first mile as a crowded mile: "My plan was to start conservatively. I had no desire to weave through the crowds. Passing would have been impossible had I tried anyway. We were packed in tight."
So tight that von Koch failed to spot the sign signifying she had run one mile. Her watch, a Garmin Forerunner 305, beeped to alert her. Glancing at the screen, she was disappointed that the display screen showed a time of 7:58. She had hoped to run between 7:30 and 7:35 for the first half of the race. If her Garmin could be believed, she had lost nearly 30 seconds off her planned pace. More the bother, she had lost it on the steepest downhill of the entire 26.2-mile course! Von Koch quickly realized that, hemmed in by the crowds, she had no choice but to relax and accept the pace dictated by those surrounding her. Days later, when she posted her Boston memories to the Internet, von Koch had rationalized away those lost seconds:
"It's tempting to start the race and go out too fast on the downhill. This is hard on your legs and will come back to haunt you later in the race. I had been advised again and again to start out slow so I played it safe. The next few miles went smoothly. It was still really crowded, but the continued downhills allowed me to hit my paces."
Erica Greene also had been warned about the downhills by her coach Fred Treseler, who had spoken at a Sunday morning breakfast for the charity Team Eye and Ear. Treseler had offered two recommendations for the early miles:
- Start off slow.
- Do not let the crowd distract you from your pace.
As the runners surrounding Greene crossed the border between the towns of Hopkinton and Ashland at about two miles, those words of Treseler continued to echo in her ears.
Jen Marr described her thoughts during the first few miles in almost a stream-of-consciousness:
It was a hard race from the start.
Mile 1, a side ache:
Are you kidding me? Now?
I remembered from my training:
Blow it out hard.
Push against your ribs.
Don't think about it.
Blow it out some more.
Soon it was gone.
Heather Lee-Callaghan later would recall the spectators: "There were spectators lined completely on both sides, even in the early miles. We ran past kids with hands reaching out for high fives. I high-fived probably 25 people coasting down the first hill. I felt like a rock star."
Lee-Callaghan ran with an iPod, but did not even turn it on until past five miles. "There was enough music coming from off the course. I must have heard the theme from Rocky 20 times." Lee-Callaghan decided that the next time she ran Boston, she would leave her iPod back in the hotel.
She came to the 10-kilometer checkpoint, near the Framingham train depot. Lee-Callaghan knew that friends were tracking her times online, "so every time I saw a chip mat, I ran fast toward it and stomped on the mat." She did not know why. "Not like it would show my status quicker or faster." Her time at the 10-K checkpoint mats was 48:44, putting her far behind Rita Jeptoo and Shalane Flanagan, who had crossed the same mats together in 36:04 and 36:05.
It was approximately 11:12 a.m. when Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped the 10-K mat. At that same time of day, the lead women runners, given their head start, were into the Newton hills, closing on the 30-K mat. The women were in the same race, and yet they were not - but that did not concern Heather Lee-Callaghan. Slapping hands and listening to the music, she was having too much fun.
The hard running for her, and so many others, had not yet begun.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
4:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
04:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
Natick
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice.
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice. What had been Waverly Street becomes West Central Street, although the highway remains 135. After a slight rise and a curve so gentle they hardly notice it, runners pass Lake Cochituate. In addition to the cheering masses, fishermen can be seen standing by the side of the lake, trying their luck, oblivious to the commotion behind them, the staccato sound of soft-bottomed shoes pounding the pavement not being part of their attention span.
The 15-K checkpoint is beside the lake. Heather Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped another mat in 1:12:35. Far ahead, given their head start, the lead women were closing in on Kenmore Square, one mile to go. By then Rita Jeptoo had opened a 12-second lead on Shalane Flanagan, who had slipped to fourth place. Even with her fast track legs, it seemed unlikely that Shalane could reel Jeptoo in by the time they turned toward the finish line on Boylston Street.
For a brief period of time, at least until the moment Jeptoo crossed the finish line, every runner running the Boston Marathon was on the course together. Every single one of them! The 23,000 runners of Boston 2013 probably covered near 20 miles of road. They filled that road, like a snake slithering toward the sea.
Lee-Callaghan had no time to think about what part of the snake she might be. The Canadian runner was suffering a medical emergency. The top of her right shoe was soaked with blood. A burst blister! This had happened to her once before at the Fredericton Marathon in New Brunswick, Canada. Lee-Callaghan did not like blisters; she did not like blood. She knew she would need to deal with the growing crisis. But how?
Lee-Callaghan decided she had two choices:
-
Be totally stupid and continue, hoping for a PR, obsessing over her Garmin the whole way.
-
Stop at an aid station, bandage up, lose three to five minutes, but finish the race and have fun.
She chose the second option, running into an aid station just past the Natick Common, screaming: "I've got a bloody toe! I need a bandage!"
"Sit down," said the medic, trying to calm her.
Blogging later, the hyphenated runner would describe having a massive panic attack: "I'm taking off my running shoe and bloody sock watching hundreds of runners go by as the clock is ticking during the Boston Marathon!"
While the medic bandaged her toe, she noticed two other men and a woman sitting in the tent, Mylar blankets wrapped around their shoulders. "Neither looked like they intended to get back on the course. They told me I looked strong and wished me luck and said to keep going. I wished them well, thanked the volunteer and ran out of the tent like a bat out of hell."
Thoughts continued to boil within the head of Jen Marr:
Look around:
So many people.
Clapping,
Cheering,
Calling our names.
Kids, so many of them.
So cute.
Holding out licorice, water, jelly beans, oranges, ice,
And best of all, their hands.
"Take it all in," I kept repeating to myself.
High-five the kids.
Wave at the adults.
Thumbs-up to the people holding signs.
We were having fun.
Not everybody was having fun. As it always does, the toughest race on the World Marathon Majors calendar soon would take its toll from runners who might be said to have misbehaved, who perhaps had not trained as hard as planned, who had chosen a toofast pace, who became overwhelmed by the experience of Boston and forgot that they had come to race.
This included Amy Zebala. "The race was phenomenal. It was a gorgeous day: sunny, with temps in the high 40s to mid-50s. After the congested start, the course opened up. Into Natick, I was 5 to 10 seconds ahead of my planned pace, but I was holding back and felt everything was going well. The crowd was vocal, and the miles flew by.
"At about 10 miles, I began to have some tummy issues." Zebala eventually would need to take a bathroom break, but it cost her only a minute, and she was soon back on pace. Time flies when you're having fun.
Erica Greene found the Boston Marathon to be Amazing and Awesome: "The crowds were awesome. There were so many people. It was amazing, so therefore I was never able to settle into a rhythm, because everything was awesome!
"I was giving high fives, asking people if I was going the right way, and asking Team Girl Scouts, ‘Where are Thin Mints?' I was having a ball, but it began affecting my running. I hit a wall at Mile 11."
Mile 11, she said to herself. Really?
Aubrey Birzon Blanda ran wearing a bib that had been signed by Kathrine Switzer at the Expo. Switzer had been one of the earliest of women running Boston, and she remained a celebrity and role model among female runners. This was her 36th consecutive year working with the WBZ-TV team. Switzer also had signed Blanda's bib in 2010 and 2011, but Aubrey this year had struggled with hamstring problems during the last several weeks of training. Partly for that reason, she decided to accept the pace set by a man named Allan she had met walking to the starting line.
"Allan set a tough pace, and the hamstring felt good until Mile 10." It was then that Blanda realized the reason the hamstring didn't bother her was because every other muscle, down to her ankles, was shot. "Six miles to go to the Newton hills, and my quads were completely dead."
"I was trashed."
Tracy O'Hara McGuire, 37, a stay-at-home mom from Portland, Oregon, accepted the cheers of fans along the sidelines, feeling like a superstar: "Thousands of fans screaming your name, cheering you on, pushing you past your limits. It's simply magical."
But as McGuire later would admit, coming through Framingham and into Natick, "the wheels began to fall off." Her stomach felt full. Her head felt dizzy. She started to feel nauseous - and she still had more than half the marathon to run. McGuire decided she had been drinking too much water, so she threw away the bottle she had been carrying.
Carissa von Koch struggled as she passed Mile 11 and approached the town of Wellesley. Her stomach was upset, and she needed a bathroom break, but someone was ahead of her in line, so she kept running, then she changed her mind and turned back. Once inside the porta potty, she heard her watch beep into auto pause mode. At that point, she knew she had lost track of her overall time.
"I stepped out of the bathroom feeling defeated. I thought of all my friends who were running the marathon just to soak up the atmosphere. I wanted to join them, but here I was stuck in the middle: not running fast, but not running for fun, either. I thought of everybody back home checking my progress online. They would feel concerned for me when they realized I was not hitting my pace goals."
Von Koch went back to doing the only option left her: Carrying on despite it all, running smart, conserving energy, and taking what the legs would give her that day.
Michele Keane felt a wave of nostalgia hit her as she passed through downtown Natick. She spotted a restaurant, formerly an ice cream spot when she was growing up. And then she saw her mother, Jean Collette, standing there as always, waving, cheering, shouting, "Michele! Michele!" This was their spot. Her mother still lived in their old house. Michele remembered how, when she was a girl, she and Mom would hand cups of water to passing runners. She stopped for a drink that was as much celebratory as refreshing.
Then she kissed Mom and kept running.
Jessica Reed, 37, a registered dietitian from Athens, Ohio, entered Boston with anticipation that could, at best, be described as lukewarm: "After doing Ironman, I didn't think Boston was such a big whoop." The cheers of the crowd changed her mind. Never in any of the triathlons she had run had Reed encountered such crowd support. That plus the signs many of the spectators held.
"You Are Not Almost There!"
"Toenails Are For Wusses!"
"26.2: Because 26.3 Would Be CRAZY!"
John Munro also was amazed by the energy flowing from everyone standing by the side of the road: "These weren't spectators, they were supporters, who screamed their heads off, who waved funny placards, who said something like, ˜That isn't sweat, it's awesome leaking out.' These were supporters who screamed so loudly at Wellesley College, you could hear them a half-mile before you saw them."
The half-marathon was just past Wellesley College in the town of the same name. The belly of the snake had now reached that point in the Boston Marathon.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
The Ashland Hills
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners.
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners. The challenge comes from the downhill tilt of these early miles. Boston is a downhill course, dropping from 462 feet above sea level on the starting line to 16 feet above sea level on the final run-in at Boylston Street. Among the steepest areas is the first half-mile, nearly a 150-foot drop in elevation, almost a toboggan slide that can get runners in trouble if they run the slide too fast. As much a problem are the several miles continuing from Hopkinton through Ashland and into Framingham: rolling, but rolling more downhill than uphill. Suddenly, runners find themselves moving way faster than their planned pace, a serious tactical mistake for anyone hopeful of running a time equal to or faster than their BQ, the qualifying time that had gotten them into the 2013 Boston Marathon.
Checking their watches at Ashland, smart runners realize this and throttle back, saving energy for the challenging uphill miles to come later, particularly the four hills that culminate with Heartbreak Hill in Newton. Or maybe they do not recognize their mistake until Framingham. Or maybe Newton, by which time it is too late. They are cooked. The four Newton hills will destroy them. And if not then, the subtle downhill from Cleveland Circle at about 22 miles to Kenmore Square at about 25 miles will pound their quadriceps muscles to mush, making the final 385 yards into the finish line on Boylston Street not happy yards. "If I only had paced myself better," is the cry of defeated runners as they soak in tubs after returning to their hotels.
Among those recognizing the dangers that the Boston course presented was Carissa von Koch. She described the first mile as a crowded mile: "My plan was to start conservatively. I had no desire to weave through the crowds. Passing would have been impossible had I tried anyway. We were packed in tight."
So tight that von Koch failed to spot the sign signifying she had run one mile. Her watch, a Garmin Forerunner 305, beeped to alert her. Glancing at the screen, she was disappointed that the display screen showed a time of 7:58. She had hoped to run between 7:30 and 7:35 for the first half of the race. If her Garmin could be believed, she had lost nearly 30 seconds off her planned pace. More the bother, she had lost it on the steepest downhill of the entire 26.2-mile course! Von Koch quickly realized that, hemmed in by the crowds, she had no choice but to relax and accept the pace dictated by those surrounding her. Days later, when she posted her Boston memories to the Internet, von Koch had rationalized away those lost seconds:
"It's tempting to start the race and go out too fast on the downhill. This is hard on your legs and will come back to haunt you later in the race. I had been advised again and again to start out slow so I played it safe. The next few miles went smoothly. It was still really crowded, but the continued downhills allowed me to hit my paces."
Erica Greene also had been warned about the downhills by her coach Fred Treseler, who had spoken at a Sunday morning breakfast for the charity Team Eye and Ear. Treseler had offered two recommendations for the early miles:
- Start off slow.
- Do not let the crowd distract you from your pace.
As the runners surrounding Greene crossed the border between the towns of Hopkinton and Ashland at about two miles, those words of Treseler continued to echo in her ears.
Jen Marr described her thoughts during the first few miles in almost a stream-of-consciousness:
It was a hard race from the start.
Mile 1, a side ache:
Are you kidding me? Now?
I remembered from my training:
Blow it out hard.
Push against your ribs.
Don't think about it.
Blow it out some more.
Soon it was gone.
Heather Lee-Callaghan later would recall the spectators: "There were spectators lined completely on both sides, even in the early miles. We ran past kids with hands reaching out for high fives. I high-fived probably 25 people coasting down the first hill. I felt like a rock star."
Lee-Callaghan ran with an iPod, but did not even turn it on until past five miles. "There was enough music coming from off the course. I must have heard the theme from Rocky 20 times." Lee-Callaghan decided that the next time she ran Boston, she would leave her iPod back in the hotel.
She came to the 10-kilometer checkpoint, near the Framingham train depot. Lee-Callaghan knew that friends were tracking her times online, "so every time I saw a chip mat, I ran fast toward it and stomped on the mat." She did not know why. "Not like it would show my status quicker or faster." Her time at the 10-K checkpoint mats was 48:44, putting her far behind Rita Jeptoo and Shalane Flanagan, who had crossed the same mats together in 36:04 and 36:05.
It was approximately 11:12 a.m. when Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped the 10-K mat. At that same time of day, the lead women runners, given their head start, were into the Newton hills, closing on the 30-K mat. The women were in the same race, and yet they were not - but that did not concern Heather Lee-Callaghan. Slapping hands and listening to the music, she was having too much fun.
The hard running for her, and so many others, had not yet begun.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
4:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
04:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
Natick
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice.
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice. What had been Waverly Street becomes West Central Street, although the highway remains 135. After a slight rise and a curve so gentle they hardly notice it, runners pass Lake Cochituate. In addition to the cheering masses, fishermen can be seen standing by the side of the lake, trying their luck, oblivious to the commotion behind them, the staccato sound of soft-bottomed shoes pounding the pavement not being part of their attention span.
The 15-K checkpoint is beside the lake. Heather Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped another mat in 1:12:35. Far ahead, given their head start, the lead women were closing in on Kenmore Square, one mile to go. By then Rita Jeptoo had opened a 12-second lead on Shalane Flanagan, who had slipped to fourth place. Even with her fast track legs, it seemed unlikely that Shalane could reel Jeptoo in by the time they turned toward the finish line on Boylston Street.
For a brief period of time, at least until the moment Jeptoo crossed the finish line, every runner running the Boston Marathon was on the course together. Every single one of them! The 23,000 runners of Boston 2013 probably covered near 20 miles of road. They filled that road, like a snake slithering toward the sea.
Lee-Callaghan had no time to think about what part of the snake she might be. The Canadian runner was suffering a medical emergency. The top of her right shoe was soaked with blood. A burst blister! This had happened to her once before at the Fredericton Marathon in New Brunswick, Canada. Lee-Callaghan did not like blisters; she did not like blood. She knew she would need to deal with the growing crisis. But how?
Lee-Callaghan decided she had two choices:
-
Be totally stupid and continue, hoping for a PR, obsessing over her Garmin the whole way.
-
Stop at an aid station, bandage up, lose three to five minutes, but finish the race and have fun.
She chose the second option, running into an aid station just past the Natick Common, screaming: "I've got a bloody toe! I need a bandage!"
"Sit down," said the medic, trying to calm her.
Blogging later, the hyphenated runner would describe having a massive panic attack: "I'm taking off my running shoe and bloody sock watching hundreds of runners go by as the clock is ticking during the Boston Marathon!"
While the medic bandaged her toe, she noticed two other men and a woman sitting in the tent, Mylar blankets wrapped around their shoulders. "Neither looked like they intended to get back on the course. They told me I looked strong and wished me luck and said to keep going. I wished them well, thanked the volunteer and ran out of the tent like a bat out of hell."
Thoughts continued to boil within the head of Jen Marr:
Look around:
So many people.
Clapping,
Cheering,
Calling our names.
Kids, so many of them.
So cute.
Holding out licorice, water, jelly beans, oranges, ice,
And best of all, their hands.
"Take it all in," I kept repeating to myself.
High-five the kids.
Wave at the adults.
Thumbs-up to the people holding signs.
We were having fun.
Not everybody was having fun. As it always does, the toughest race on the World Marathon Majors calendar soon would take its toll from runners who might be said to have misbehaved, who perhaps had not trained as hard as planned, who had chosen a toofast pace, who became overwhelmed by the experience of Boston and forgot that they had come to race.
This included Amy Zebala. "The race was phenomenal. It was a gorgeous day: sunny, with temps in the high 40s to mid-50s. After the congested start, the course opened up. Into Natick, I was 5 to 10 seconds ahead of my planned pace, but I was holding back and felt everything was going well. The crowd was vocal, and the miles flew by.
"At about 10 miles, I began to have some tummy issues." Zebala eventually would need to take a bathroom break, but it cost her only a minute, and she was soon back on pace. Time flies when you're having fun.
Erica Greene found the Boston Marathon to be Amazing and Awesome: "The crowds were awesome. There were so many people. It was amazing, so therefore I was never able to settle into a rhythm, because everything was awesome!
"I was giving high fives, asking people if I was going the right way, and asking Team Girl Scouts, ‘Where are Thin Mints?' I was having a ball, but it began affecting my running. I hit a wall at Mile 11."
Mile 11, she said to herself. Really?
Aubrey Birzon Blanda ran wearing a bib that had been signed by Kathrine Switzer at the Expo. Switzer had been one of the earliest of women running Boston, and she remained a celebrity and role model among female runners. This was her 36th consecutive year working with the WBZ-TV team. Switzer also had signed Blanda's bib in 2010 and 2011, but Aubrey this year had struggled with hamstring problems during the last several weeks of training. Partly for that reason, she decided to accept the pace set by a man named Allan she had met walking to the starting line.
"Allan set a tough pace, and the hamstring felt good until Mile 10." It was then that Blanda realized the reason the hamstring didn't bother her was because every other muscle, down to her ankles, was shot. "Six miles to go to the Newton hills, and my quads were completely dead."
"I was trashed."
Tracy O'Hara McGuire, 37, a stay-at-home mom from Portland, Oregon, accepted the cheers of fans along the sidelines, feeling like a superstar: "Thousands of fans screaming your name, cheering you on, pushing you past your limits. It's simply magical."
But as McGuire later would admit, coming through Framingham and into Natick, "the wheels began to fall off." Her stomach felt full. Her head felt dizzy. She started to feel nauseous - and she still had more than half the marathon to run. McGuire decided she had been drinking too much water, so she threw away the bottle she had been carrying.
Carissa von Koch struggled as she passed Mile 11 and approached the town of Wellesley. Her stomach was upset, and she needed a bathroom break, but someone was ahead of her in line, so she kept running, then she changed her mind and turned back. Once inside the porta potty, she heard her watch beep into auto pause mode. At that point, she knew she had lost track of her overall time.
"I stepped out of the bathroom feeling defeated. I thought of all my friends who were running the marathon just to soak up the atmosphere. I wanted to join them, but here I was stuck in the middle: not running fast, but not running for fun, either. I thought of everybody back home checking my progress online. They would feel concerned for me when they realized I was not hitting my pace goals."
Von Koch went back to doing the only option left her: Carrying on despite it all, running smart, conserving energy, and taking what the legs would give her that day.
Michele Keane felt a wave of nostalgia hit her as she passed through downtown Natick. She spotted a restaurant, formerly an ice cream spot when she was growing up. And then she saw her mother, Jean Collette, standing there as always, waving, cheering, shouting, "Michele! Michele!" This was their spot. Her mother still lived in their old house. Michele remembered how, when she was a girl, she and Mom would hand cups of water to passing runners. She stopped for a drink that was as much celebratory as refreshing.
Then she kissed Mom and kept running.
Jessica Reed, 37, a registered dietitian from Athens, Ohio, entered Boston with anticipation that could, at best, be described as lukewarm: "After doing Ironman, I didn't think Boston was such a big whoop." The cheers of the crowd changed her mind. Never in any of the triathlons she had run had Reed encountered such crowd support. That plus the signs many of the spectators held.
"You Are Not Almost There!"
"Toenails Are For Wusses!"
"26.2: Because 26.3 Would Be CRAZY!"
John Munro also was amazed by the energy flowing from everyone standing by the side of the road: "These weren't spectators, they were supporters, who screamed their heads off, who waved funny placards, who said something like, ˜That isn't sweat, it's awesome leaking out.' These were supporters who screamed so loudly at Wellesley College, you could hear them a half-mile before you saw them."
The half-marathon was just past Wellesley College in the town of the same name. The belly of the snake had now reached that point in the Boston Marathon.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
The Ashland Hills
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners.
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners. The challenge comes from the downhill tilt of these early miles. Boston is a downhill course, dropping from 462 feet above sea level on the starting line to 16 feet above sea level on the final run-in at Boylston Street. Among the steepest areas is the first half-mile, nearly a 150-foot drop in elevation, almost a toboggan slide that can get runners in trouble if they run the slide too fast. As much a problem are the several miles continuing from Hopkinton through Ashland and into Framingham: rolling, but rolling more downhill than uphill. Suddenly, runners find themselves moving way faster than their planned pace, a serious tactical mistake for anyone hopeful of running a time equal to or faster than their BQ, the qualifying time that had gotten them into the 2013 Boston Marathon.
Checking their watches at Ashland, smart runners realize this and throttle back, saving energy for the challenging uphill miles to come later, particularly the four hills that culminate with Heartbreak Hill in Newton. Or maybe they do not recognize their mistake until Framingham. Or maybe Newton, by which time it is too late. They are cooked. The four Newton hills will destroy them. And if not then, the subtle downhill from Cleveland Circle at about 22 miles to Kenmore Square at about 25 miles will pound their quadriceps muscles to mush, making the final 385 yards into the finish line on Boylston Street not happy yards. "If I only had paced myself better," is the cry of defeated runners as they soak in tubs after returning to their hotels.
Among those recognizing the dangers that the Boston course presented was Carissa von Koch. She described the first mile as a crowded mile: "My plan was to start conservatively. I had no desire to weave through the crowds. Passing would have been impossible had I tried anyway. We were packed in tight."
So tight that von Koch failed to spot the sign signifying she had run one mile. Her watch, a Garmin Forerunner 305, beeped to alert her. Glancing at the screen, she was disappointed that the display screen showed a time of 7:58. She had hoped to run between 7:30 and 7:35 for the first half of the race. If her Garmin could be believed, she had lost nearly 30 seconds off her planned pace. More the bother, she had lost it on the steepest downhill of the entire 26.2-mile course! Von Koch quickly realized that, hemmed in by the crowds, she had no choice but to relax and accept the pace dictated by those surrounding her. Days later, when she posted her Boston memories to the Internet, von Koch had rationalized away those lost seconds:
"It's tempting to start the race and go out too fast on the downhill. This is hard on your legs and will come back to haunt you later in the race. I had been advised again and again to start out slow so I played it safe. The next few miles went smoothly. It was still really crowded, but the continued downhills allowed me to hit my paces."
Erica Greene also had been warned about the downhills by her coach Fred Treseler, who had spoken at a Sunday morning breakfast for the charity Team Eye and Ear. Treseler had offered two recommendations for the early miles:
- Start off slow.
- Do not let the crowd distract you from your pace.
As the runners surrounding Greene crossed the border between the towns of Hopkinton and Ashland at about two miles, those words of Treseler continued to echo in her ears.
Jen Marr described her thoughts during the first few miles in almost a stream-of-consciousness:
It was a hard race from the start.
Mile 1, a side ache:
Are you kidding me? Now?
I remembered from my training:
Blow it out hard.
Push against your ribs.
Don't think about it.
Blow it out some more.
Soon it was gone.
Heather Lee-Callaghan later would recall the spectators: "There were spectators lined completely on both sides, even in the early miles. We ran past kids with hands reaching out for high fives. I high-fived probably 25 people coasting down the first hill. I felt like a rock star."
Lee-Callaghan ran with an iPod, but did not even turn it on until past five miles. "There was enough music coming from off the course. I must have heard the theme from Rocky 20 times." Lee-Callaghan decided that the next time she ran Boston, she would leave her iPod back in the hotel.
She came to the 10-kilometer checkpoint, near the Framingham train depot. Lee-Callaghan knew that friends were tracking her times online, "so every time I saw a chip mat, I ran fast toward it and stomped on the mat." She did not know why. "Not like it would show my status quicker or faster." Her time at the 10-K checkpoint mats was 48:44, putting her far behind Rita Jeptoo and Shalane Flanagan, who had crossed the same mats together in 36:04 and 36:05.
It was approximately 11:12 a.m. when Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped the 10-K mat. At that same time of day, the lead women runners, given their head start, were into the Newton hills, closing on the 30-K mat. The women were in the same race, and yet they were not - but that did not concern Heather Lee-Callaghan. Slapping hands and listening to the music, she was having too much fun.
The hard running for her, and so many others, had not yet begun.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
4:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
04:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
Natick
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice.
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice. What had been Waverly Street becomes West Central Street, although the highway remains 135. After a slight rise and a curve so gentle they hardly notice it, runners pass Lake Cochituate. In addition to the cheering masses, fishermen can be seen standing by the side of the lake, trying their luck, oblivious to the commotion behind them, the staccato sound of soft-bottomed shoes pounding the pavement not being part of their attention span.
The 15-K checkpoint is beside the lake. Heather Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped another mat in 1:12:35. Far ahead, given their head start, the lead women were closing in on Kenmore Square, one mile to go. By then Rita Jeptoo had opened a 12-second lead on Shalane Flanagan, who had slipped to fourth place. Even with her fast track legs, it seemed unlikely that Shalane could reel Jeptoo in by the time they turned toward the finish line on Boylston Street.
For a brief period of time, at least until the moment Jeptoo crossed the finish line, every runner running the Boston Marathon was on the course together. Every single one of them! The 23,000 runners of Boston 2013 probably covered near 20 miles of road. They filled that road, like a snake slithering toward the sea.
Lee-Callaghan had no time to think about what part of the snake she might be. The Canadian runner was suffering a medical emergency. The top of her right shoe was soaked with blood. A burst blister! This had happened to her once before at the Fredericton Marathon in New Brunswick, Canada. Lee-Callaghan did not like blisters; she did not like blood. She knew she would need to deal with the growing crisis. But how?
Lee-Callaghan decided she had two choices:
-
Be totally stupid and continue, hoping for a PR, obsessing over her Garmin the whole way.
-
Stop at an aid station, bandage up, lose three to five minutes, but finish the race and have fun.
She chose the second option, running into an aid station just past the Natick Common, screaming: "I've got a bloody toe! I need a bandage!"
"Sit down," said the medic, trying to calm her.
Blogging later, the hyphenated runner would describe having a massive panic attack: "I'm taking off my running shoe and bloody sock watching hundreds of runners go by as the clock is ticking during the Boston Marathon!"
While the medic bandaged her toe, she noticed two other men and a woman sitting in the tent, Mylar blankets wrapped around their shoulders. "Neither looked like they intended to get back on the course. They told me I looked strong and wished me luck and said to keep going. I wished them well, thanked the volunteer and ran out of the tent like a bat out of hell."
Thoughts continued to boil within the head of Jen Marr:
Look around:
So many people.
Clapping,
Cheering,
Calling our names.
Kids, so many of them.
So cute.
Holding out licorice, water, jelly beans, oranges, ice,
And best of all, their hands.
"Take it all in," I kept repeating to myself.
High-five the kids.
Wave at the adults.
Thumbs-up to the people holding signs.
We were having fun.
Not everybody was having fun. As it always does, the toughest race on the World Marathon Majors calendar soon would take its toll from runners who might be said to have misbehaved, who perhaps had not trained as hard as planned, who had chosen a toofast pace, who became overwhelmed by the experience of Boston and forgot that they had come to race.
This included Amy Zebala. "The race was phenomenal. It was a gorgeous day: sunny, with temps in the high 40s to mid-50s. After the congested start, the course opened up. Into Natick, I was 5 to 10 seconds ahead of my planned pace, but I was holding back and felt everything was going well. The crowd was vocal, and the miles flew by.
"At about 10 miles, I began to have some tummy issues." Zebala eventually would need to take a bathroom break, but it cost her only a minute, and she was soon back on pace. Time flies when you're having fun.
Erica Greene found the Boston Marathon to be Amazing and Awesome: "The crowds were awesome. There were so many people. It was amazing, so therefore I was never able to settle into a rhythm, because everything was awesome!
"I was giving high fives, asking people if I was going the right way, and asking Team Girl Scouts, ‘Where are Thin Mints?' I was having a ball, but it began affecting my running. I hit a wall at Mile 11."
Mile 11, she said to herself. Really?
Aubrey Birzon Blanda ran wearing a bib that had been signed by Kathrine Switzer at the Expo. Switzer had been one of the earliest of women running Boston, and she remained a celebrity and role model among female runners. This was her 36th consecutive year working with the WBZ-TV team. Switzer also had signed Blanda's bib in 2010 and 2011, but Aubrey this year had struggled with hamstring problems during the last several weeks of training. Partly for that reason, she decided to accept the pace set by a man named Allan she had met walking to the starting line.
"Allan set a tough pace, and the hamstring felt good until Mile 10." It was then that Blanda realized the reason the hamstring didn't bother her was because every other muscle, down to her ankles, was shot. "Six miles to go to the Newton hills, and my quads were completely dead."
"I was trashed."
Tracy O'Hara McGuire, 37, a stay-at-home mom from Portland, Oregon, accepted the cheers of fans along the sidelines, feeling like a superstar: "Thousands of fans screaming your name, cheering you on, pushing you past your limits. It's simply magical."
But as McGuire later would admit, coming through Framingham and into Natick, "the wheels began to fall off." Her stomach felt full. Her head felt dizzy. She started to feel nauseous - and she still had more than half the marathon to run. McGuire decided she had been drinking too much water, so she threw away the bottle she had been carrying.
Carissa von Koch struggled as she passed Mile 11 and approached the town of Wellesley. Her stomach was upset, and she needed a bathroom break, but someone was ahead of her in line, so she kept running, then she changed her mind and turned back. Once inside the porta potty, she heard her watch beep into auto pause mode. At that point, she knew she had lost track of her overall time.
"I stepped out of the bathroom feeling defeated. I thought of all my friends who were running the marathon just to soak up the atmosphere. I wanted to join them, but here I was stuck in the middle: not running fast, but not running for fun, either. I thought of everybody back home checking my progress online. They would feel concerned for me when they realized I was not hitting my pace goals."
Von Koch went back to doing the only option left her: Carrying on despite it all, running smart, conserving energy, and taking what the legs would give her that day.
Michele Keane felt a wave of nostalgia hit her as she passed through downtown Natick. She spotted a restaurant, formerly an ice cream spot when she was growing up. And then she saw her mother, Jean Collette, standing there as always, waving, cheering, shouting, "Michele! Michele!" This was their spot. Her mother still lived in their old house. Michele remembered how, when she was a girl, she and Mom would hand cups of water to passing runners. She stopped for a drink that was as much celebratory as refreshing.
Then she kissed Mom and kept running.
Jessica Reed, 37, a registered dietitian from Athens, Ohio, entered Boston with anticipation that could, at best, be described as lukewarm: "After doing Ironman, I didn't think Boston was such a big whoop." The cheers of the crowd changed her mind. Never in any of the triathlons she had run had Reed encountered such crowd support. That plus the signs many of the spectators held.
"You Are Not Almost There!"
"Toenails Are For Wusses!"
"26.2: Because 26.3 Would Be CRAZY!"
John Munro also was amazed by the energy flowing from everyone standing by the side of the road: "These weren't spectators, they were supporters, who screamed their heads off, who waved funny placards, who said something like, ˜That isn't sweat, it's awesome leaking out.' These were supporters who screamed so loudly at Wellesley College, you could hear them a half-mile before you saw them."
The half-marathon was just past Wellesley College in the town of the same name. The belly of the snake had now reached that point in the Boston Marathon.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
The Ashland Hills
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners.
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners. The challenge comes from the downhill tilt of these early miles. Boston is a downhill course, dropping from 462 feet above sea level on the starting line to 16 feet above sea level on the final run-in at Boylston Street. Among the steepest areas is the first half-mile, nearly a 150-foot drop in elevation, almost a toboggan slide that can get runners in trouble if they run the slide too fast. As much a problem are the several miles continuing from Hopkinton through Ashland and into Framingham: rolling, but rolling more downhill than uphill. Suddenly, runners find themselves moving way faster than their planned pace, a serious tactical mistake for anyone hopeful of running a time equal to or faster than their BQ, the qualifying time that had gotten them into the 2013 Boston Marathon.
Checking their watches at Ashland, smart runners realize this and throttle back, saving energy for the challenging uphill miles to come later, particularly the four hills that culminate with Heartbreak Hill in Newton. Or maybe they do not recognize their mistake until Framingham. Or maybe Newton, by which time it is too late. They are cooked. The four Newton hills will destroy them. And if not then, the subtle downhill from Cleveland Circle at about 22 miles to Kenmore Square at about 25 miles will pound their quadriceps muscles to mush, making the final 385 yards into the finish line on Boylston Street not happy yards. "If I only had paced myself better," is the cry of defeated runners as they soak in tubs after returning to their hotels.
Among those recognizing the dangers that the Boston course presented was Carissa von Koch. She described the first mile as a crowded mile: "My plan was to start conservatively. I had no desire to weave through the crowds. Passing would have been impossible had I tried anyway. We were packed in tight."
So tight that von Koch failed to spot the sign signifying she had run one mile. Her watch, a Garmin Forerunner 305, beeped to alert her. Glancing at the screen, she was disappointed that the display screen showed a time of 7:58. She had hoped to run between 7:30 and 7:35 for the first half of the race. If her Garmin could be believed, she had lost nearly 30 seconds off her planned pace. More the bother, she had lost it on the steepest downhill of the entire 26.2-mile course! Von Koch quickly realized that, hemmed in by the crowds, she had no choice but to relax and accept the pace dictated by those surrounding her. Days later, when she posted her Boston memories to the Internet, von Koch had rationalized away those lost seconds:
"It's tempting to start the race and go out too fast on the downhill. This is hard on your legs and will come back to haunt you later in the race. I had been advised again and again to start out slow so I played it safe. The next few miles went smoothly. It was still really crowded, but the continued downhills allowed me to hit my paces."
Erica Greene also had been warned about the downhills by her coach Fred Treseler, who had spoken at a Sunday morning breakfast for the charity Team Eye and Ear. Treseler had offered two recommendations for the early miles:
- Start off slow.
- Do not let the crowd distract you from your pace.
As the runners surrounding Greene crossed the border between the towns of Hopkinton and Ashland at about two miles, those words of Treseler continued to echo in her ears.
Jen Marr described her thoughts during the first few miles in almost a stream-of-consciousness:
It was a hard race from the start.
Mile 1, a side ache:
Are you kidding me? Now?
I remembered from my training:
Blow it out hard.
Push against your ribs.
Don't think about it.
Blow it out some more.
Soon it was gone.
Heather Lee-Callaghan later would recall the spectators: "There were spectators lined completely on both sides, even in the early miles. We ran past kids with hands reaching out for high fives. I high-fived probably 25 people coasting down the first hill. I felt like a rock star."
Lee-Callaghan ran with an iPod, but did not even turn it on until past five miles. "There was enough music coming from off the course. I must have heard the theme from Rocky 20 times." Lee-Callaghan decided that the next time she ran Boston, she would leave her iPod back in the hotel.
She came to the 10-kilometer checkpoint, near the Framingham train depot. Lee-Callaghan knew that friends were tracking her times online, "so every time I saw a chip mat, I ran fast toward it and stomped on the mat." She did not know why. "Not like it would show my status quicker or faster." Her time at the 10-K checkpoint mats was 48:44, putting her far behind Rita Jeptoo and Shalane Flanagan, who had crossed the same mats together in 36:04 and 36:05.
It was approximately 11:12 a.m. when Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped the 10-K mat. At that same time of day, the lead women runners, given their head start, were into the Newton hills, closing on the 30-K mat. The women were in the same race, and yet they were not - but that did not concern Heather Lee-Callaghan. Slapping hands and listening to the music, she was having too much fun.
The hard running for her, and so many others, had not yet begun.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
4:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
04:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
Natick
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice.
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice. What had been Waverly Street becomes West Central Street, although the highway remains 135. After a slight rise and a curve so gentle they hardly notice it, runners pass Lake Cochituate. In addition to the cheering masses, fishermen can be seen standing by the side of the lake, trying their luck, oblivious to the commotion behind them, the staccato sound of soft-bottomed shoes pounding the pavement not being part of their attention span.
The 15-K checkpoint is beside the lake. Heather Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped another mat in 1:12:35. Far ahead, given their head start, the lead women were closing in on Kenmore Square, one mile to go. By then Rita Jeptoo had opened a 12-second lead on Shalane Flanagan, who had slipped to fourth place. Even with her fast track legs, it seemed unlikely that Shalane could reel Jeptoo in by the time they turned toward the finish line on Boylston Street.
For a brief period of time, at least until the moment Jeptoo crossed the finish line, every runner running the Boston Marathon was on the course together. Every single one of them! The 23,000 runners of Boston 2013 probably covered near 20 miles of road. They filled that road, like a snake slithering toward the sea.
Lee-Callaghan had no time to think about what part of the snake she might be. The Canadian runner was suffering a medical emergency. The top of her right shoe was soaked with blood. A burst blister! This had happened to her once before at the Fredericton Marathon in New Brunswick, Canada. Lee-Callaghan did not like blisters; she did not like blood. She knew she would need to deal with the growing crisis. But how?
Lee-Callaghan decided she had two choices:
-
Be totally stupid and continue, hoping for a PR, obsessing over her Garmin the whole way.
-
Stop at an aid station, bandage up, lose three to five minutes, but finish the race and have fun.
She chose the second option, running into an aid station just past the Natick Common, screaming: "I've got a bloody toe! I need a bandage!"
"Sit down," said the medic, trying to calm her.
Blogging later, the hyphenated runner would describe having a massive panic attack: "I'm taking off my running shoe and bloody sock watching hundreds of runners go by as the clock is ticking during the Boston Marathon!"
While the medic bandaged her toe, she noticed two other men and a woman sitting in the tent, Mylar blankets wrapped around their shoulders. "Neither looked like they intended to get back on the course. They told me I looked strong and wished me luck and said to keep going. I wished them well, thanked the volunteer and ran out of the tent like a bat out of hell."
Thoughts continued to boil within the head of Jen Marr:
Look around:
So many people.
Clapping,
Cheering,
Calling our names.
Kids, so many of them.
So cute.
Holding out licorice, water, jelly beans, oranges, ice,
And best of all, their hands.
"Take it all in," I kept repeating to myself.
High-five the kids.
Wave at the adults.
Thumbs-up to the people holding signs.
We were having fun.
Not everybody was having fun. As it always does, the toughest race on the World Marathon Majors calendar soon would take its toll from runners who might be said to have misbehaved, who perhaps had not trained as hard as planned, who had chosen a toofast pace, who became overwhelmed by the experience of Boston and forgot that they had come to race.
This included Amy Zebala. "The race was phenomenal. It was a gorgeous day: sunny, with temps in the high 40s to mid-50s. After the congested start, the course opened up. Into Natick, I was 5 to 10 seconds ahead of my planned pace, but I was holding back and felt everything was going well. The crowd was vocal, and the miles flew by.
"At about 10 miles, I began to have some tummy issues." Zebala eventually would need to take a bathroom break, but it cost her only a minute, and she was soon back on pace. Time flies when you're having fun.
Erica Greene found the Boston Marathon to be Amazing and Awesome: "The crowds were awesome. There were so many people. It was amazing, so therefore I was never able to settle into a rhythm, because everything was awesome!
"I was giving high fives, asking people if I was going the right way, and asking Team Girl Scouts, ‘Where are Thin Mints?' I was having a ball, but it began affecting my running. I hit a wall at Mile 11."
Mile 11, she said to herself. Really?
Aubrey Birzon Blanda ran wearing a bib that had been signed by Kathrine Switzer at the Expo. Switzer had been one of the earliest of women running Boston, and she remained a celebrity and role model among female runners. This was her 36th consecutive year working with the WBZ-TV team. Switzer also had signed Blanda's bib in 2010 and 2011, but Aubrey this year had struggled with hamstring problems during the last several weeks of training. Partly for that reason, she decided to accept the pace set by a man named Allan she had met walking to the starting line.
"Allan set a tough pace, and the hamstring felt good until Mile 10." It was then that Blanda realized the reason the hamstring didn't bother her was because every other muscle, down to her ankles, was shot. "Six miles to go to the Newton hills, and my quads were completely dead."
"I was trashed."
Tracy O'Hara McGuire, 37, a stay-at-home mom from Portland, Oregon, accepted the cheers of fans along the sidelines, feeling like a superstar: "Thousands of fans screaming your name, cheering you on, pushing you past your limits. It's simply magical."
But as McGuire later would admit, coming through Framingham and into Natick, "the wheels began to fall off." Her stomach felt full. Her head felt dizzy. She started to feel nauseous - and she still had more than half the marathon to run. McGuire decided she had been drinking too much water, so she threw away the bottle she had been carrying.
Carissa von Koch struggled as she passed Mile 11 and approached the town of Wellesley. Her stomach was upset, and she needed a bathroom break, but someone was ahead of her in line, so she kept running, then she changed her mind and turned back. Once inside the porta potty, she heard her watch beep into auto pause mode. At that point, she knew she had lost track of her overall time.
"I stepped out of the bathroom feeling defeated. I thought of all my friends who were running the marathon just to soak up the atmosphere. I wanted to join them, but here I was stuck in the middle: not running fast, but not running for fun, either. I thought of everybody back home checking my progress online. They would feel concerned for me when they realized I was not hitting my pace goals."
Von Koch went back to doing the only option left her: Carrying on despite it all, running smart, conserving energy, and taking what the legs would give her that day.
Michele Keane felt a wave of nostalgia hit her as she passed through downtown Natick. She spotted a restaurant, formerly an ice cream spot when she was growing up. And then she saw her mother, Jean Collette, standing there as always, waving, cheering, shouting, "Michele! Michele!" This was their spot. Her mother still lived in their old house. Michele remembered how, when she was a girl, she and Mom would hand cups of water to passing runners. She stopped for a drink that was as much celebratory as refreshing.
Then she kissed Mom and kept running.
Jessica Reed, 37, a registered dietitian from Athens, Ohio, entered Boston with anticipation that could, at best, be described as lukewarm: "After doing Ironman, I didn't think Boston was such a big whoop." The cheers of the crowd changed her mind. Never in any of the triathlons she had run had Reed encountered such crowd support. That plus the signs many of the spectators held.
"You Are Not Almost There!"
"Toenails Are For Wusses!"
"26.2: Because 26.3 Would Be CRAZY!"
John Munro also was amazed by the energy flowing from everyone standing by the side of the road: "These weren't spectators, they were supporters, who screamed their heads off, who waved funny placards, who said something like, ˜That isn't sweat, it's awesome leaking out.' These were supporters who screamed so loudly at Wellesley College, you could hear them a half-mile before you saw them."
The half-marathon was just past Wellesley College in the town of the same name. The belly of the snake had now reached that point in the Boston Marathon.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
The Ashland Hills
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners.
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners. The challenge comes from the downhill tilt of these early miles. Boston is a downhill course, dropping from 462 feet above sea level on the starting line to 16 feet above sea level on the final run-in at Boylston Street. Among the steepest areas is the first half-mile, nearly a 150-foot drop in elevation, almost a toboggan slide that can get runners in trouble if they run the slide too fast. As much a problem are the several miles continuing from Hopkinton through Ashland and into Framingham: rolling, but rolling more downhill than uphill. Suddenly, runners find themselves moving way faster than their planned pace, a serious tactical mistake for anyone hopeful of running a time equal to or faster than their BQ, the qualifying time that had gotten them into the 2013 Boston Marathon.
Checking their watches at Ashland, smart runners realize this and throttle back, saving energy for the challenging uphill miles to come later, particularly the four hills that culminate with Heartbreak Hill in Newton. Or maybe they do not recognize their mistake until Framingham. Or maybe Newton, by which time it is too late. They are cooked. The four Newton hills will destroy them. And if not then, the subtle downhill from Cleveland Circle at about 22 miles to Kenmore Square at about 25 miles will pound their quadriceps muscles to mush, making the final 385 yards into the finish line on Boylston Street not happy yards. "If I only had paced myself better," is the cry of defeated runners as they soak in tubs after returning to their hotels.
Among those recognizing the dangers that the Boston course presented was Carissa von Koch. She described the first mile as a crowded mile: "My plan was to start conservatively. I had no desire to weave through the crowds. Passing would have been impossible had I tried anyway. We were packed in tight."
So tight that von Koch failed to spot the sign signifying she had run one mile. Her watch, a Garmin Forerunner 305, beeped to alert her. Glancing at the screen, she was disappointed that the display screen showed a time of 7:58. She had hoped to run between 7:30 and 7:35 for the first half of the race. If her Garmin could be believed, she had lost nearly 30 seconds off her planned pace. More the bother, she had lost it on the steepest downhill of the entire 26.2-mile course! Von Koch quickly realized that, hemmed in by the crowds, she had no choice but to relax and accept the pace dictated by those surrounding her. Days later, when she posted her Boston memories to the Internet, von Koch had rationalized away those lost seconds:
"It's tempting to start the race and go out too fast on the downhill. This is hard on your legs and will come back to haunt you later in the race. I had been advised again and again to start out slow so I played it safe. The next few miles went smoothly. It was still really crowded, but the continued downhills allowed me to hit my paces."
Erica Greene also had been warned about the downhills by her coach Fred Treseler, who had spoken at a Sunday morning breakfast for the charity Team Eye and Ear. Treseler had offered two recommendations for the early miles:
- Start off slow.
- Do not let the crowd distract you from your pace.
As the runners surrounding Greene crossed the border between the towns of Hopkinton and Ashland at about two miles, those words of Treseler continued to echo in her ears.
Jen Marr described her thoughts during the first few miles in almost a stream-of-consciousness:
It was a hard race from the start.
Mile 1, a side ache:
Are you kidding me? Now?
I remembered from my training:
Blow it out hard.
Push against your ribs.
Don't think about it.
Blow it out some more.
Soon it was gone.
Heather Lee-Callaghan later would recall the spectators: "There were spectators lined completely on both sides, even in the early miles. We ran past kids with hands reaching out for high fives. I high-fived probably 25 people coasting down the first hill. I felt like a rock star."
Lee-Callaghan ran with an iPod, but did not even turn it on until past five miles. "There was enough music coming from off the course. I must have heard the theme from Rocky 20 times." Lee-Callaghan decided that the next time she ran Boston, she would leave her iPod back in the hotel.
She came to the 10-kilometer checkpoint, near the Framingham train depot. Lee-Callaghan knew that friends were tracking her times online, "so every time I saw a chip mat, I ran fast toward it and stomped on the mat." She did not know why. "Not like it would show my status quicker or faster." Her time at the 10-K checkpoint mats was 48:44, putting her far behind Rita Jeptoo and Shalane Flanagan, who had crossed the same mats together in 36:04 and 36:05.
It was approximately 11:12 a.m. when Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped the 10-K mat. At that same time of day, the lead women runners, given their head start, were into the Newton hills, closing on the 30-K mat. The women were in the same race, and yet they were not - but that did not concern Heather Lee-Callaghan. Slapping hands and listening to the music, she was having too much fun.
The hard running for her, and so many others, had not yet begun.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
4:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
04:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
Natick
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice.
Departing Framingham and crossing into Natick, runners encounter a change of street names that few probably notice. What had been Waverly Street becomes West Central Street, although the highway remains 135. After a slight rise and a curve so gentle they hardly notice it, runners pass Lake Cochituate. In addition to the cheering masses, fishermen can be seen standing by the side of the lake, trying their luck, oblivious to the commotion behind them, the staccato sound of soft-bottomed shoes pounding the pavement not being part of their attention span.
The 15-K checkpoint is beside the lake. Heather Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped another mat in 1:12:35. Far ahead, given their head start, the lead women were closing in on Kenmore Square, one mile to go. By then Rita Jeptoo had opened a 12-second lead on Shalane Flanagan, who had slipped to fourth place. Even with her fast track legs, it seemed unlikely that Shalane could reel Jeptoo in by the time they turned toward the finish line on Boylston Street.
For a brief period of time, at least until the moment Jeptoo crossed the finish line, every runner running the Boston Marathon was on the course together. Every single one of them! The 23,000 runners of Boston 2013 probably covered near 20 miles of road. They filled that road, like a snake slithering toward the sea.
Lee-Callaghan had no time to think about what part of the snake she might be. The Canadian runner was suffering a medical emergency. The top of her right shoe was soaked with blood. A burst blister! This had happened to her once before at the Fredericton Marathon in New Brunswick, Canada. Lee-Callaghan did not like blisters; she did not like blood. She knew she would need to deal with the growing crisis. But how?
Lee-Callaghan decided she had two choices:
-
Be totally stupid and continue, hoping for a PR, obsessing over her Garmin the whole way.
-
Stop at an aid station, bandage up, lose three to five minutes, but finish the race and have fun.
She chose the second option, running into an aid station just past the Natick Common, screaming: "I've got a bloody toe! I need a bandage!"
"Sit down," said the medic, trying to calm her.
Blogging later, the hyphenated runner would describe having a massive panic attack: "I'm taking off my running shoe and bloody sock watching hundreds of runners go by as the clock is ticking during the Boston Marathon!"
While the medic bandaged her toe, she noticed two other men and a woman sitting in the tent, Mylar blankets wrapped around their shoulders. "Neither looked like they intended to get back on the course. They told me I looked strong and wished me luck and said to keep going. I wished them well, thanked the volunteer and ran out of the tent like a bat out of hell."
Thoughts continued to boil within the head of Jen Marr:
Look around:
So many people.
Clapping,
Cheering,
Calling our names.
Kids, so many of them.
So cute.
Holding out licorice, water, jelly beans, oranges, ice,
And best of all, their hands.
"Take it all in," I kept repeating to myself.
High-five the kids.
Wave at the adults.
Thumbs-up to the people holding signs.
We were having fun.
Not everybody was having fun. As it always does, the toughest race on the World Marathon Majors calendar soon would take its toll from runners who might be said to have misbehaved, who perhaps had not trained as hard as planned, who had chosen a toofast pace, who became overwhelmed by the experience of Boston and forgot that they had come to race.
This included Amy Zebala. "The race was phenomenal. It was a gorgeous day: sunny, with temps in the high 40s to mid-50s. After the congested start, the course opened up. Into Natick, I was 5 to 10 seconds ahead of my planned pace, but I was holding back and felt everything was going well. The crowd was vocal, and the miles flew by.
"At about 10 miles, I began to have some tummy issues." Zebala eventually would need to take a bathroom break, but it cost her only a minute, and she was soon back on pace. Time flies when you're having fun.
Erica Greene found the Boston Marathon to be Amazing and Awesome: "The crowds were awesome. There were so many people. It was amazing, so therefore I was never able to settle into a rhythm, because everything was awesome!
"I was giving high fives, asking people if I was going the right way, and asking Team Girl Scouts, ‘Where are Thin Mints?' I was having a ball, but it began affecting my running. I hit a wall at Mile 11."
Mile 11, she said to herself. Really?
Aubrey Birzon Blanda ran wearing a bib that had been signed by Kathrine Switzer at the Expo. Switzer had been one of the earliest of women running Boston, and she remained a celebrity and role model among female runners. This was her 36th consecutive year working with the WBZ-TV team. Switzer also had signed Blanda's bib in 2010 and 2011, but Aubrey this year had struggled with hamstring problems during the last several weeks of training. Partly for that reason, she decided to accept the pace set by a man named Allan she had met walking to the starting line.
"Allan set a tough pace, and the hamstring felt good until Mile 10." It was then that Blanda realized the reason the hamstring didn't bother her was because every other muscle, down to her ankles, was shot. "Six miles to go to the Newton hills, and my quads were completely dead."
"I was trashed."
Tracy O'Hara McGuire, 37, a stay-at-home mom from Portland, Oregon, accepted the cheers of fans along the sidelines, feeling like a superstar: "Thousands of fans screaming your name, cheering you on, pushing you past your limits. It's simply magical."
But as McGuire later would admit, coming through Framingham and into Natick, "the wheels began to fall off." Her stomach felt full. Her head felt dizzy. She started to feel nauseous - and she still had more than half the marathon to run. McGuire decided she had been drinking too much water, so she threw away the bottle she had been carrying.
Carissa von Koch struggled as she passed Mile 11 and approached the town of Wellesley. Her stomach was upset, and she needed a bathroom break, but someone was ahead of her in line, so she kept running, then she changed her mind and turned back. Once inside the porta potty, she heard her watch beep into auto pause mode. At that point, she knew she had lost track of her overall time.
"I stepped out of the bathroom feeling defeated. I thought of all my friends who were running the marathon just to soak up the atmosphere. I wanted to join them, but here I was stuck in the middle: not running fast, but not running for fun, either. I thought of everybody back home checking my progress online. They would feel concerned for me when they realized I was not hitting my pace goals."
Von Koch went back to doing the only option left her: Carrying on despite it all, running smart, conserving energy, and taking what the legs would give her that day.
Michele Keane felt a wave of nostalgia hit her as she passed through downtown Natick. She spotted a restaurant, formerly an ice cream spot when she was growing up. And then she saw her mother, Jean Collette, standing there as always, waving, cheering, shouting, "Michele! Michele!" This was their spot. Her mother still lived in their old house. Michele remembered how, when she was a girl, she and Mom would hand cups of water to passing runners. She stopped for a drink that was as much celebratory as refreshing.
Then she kissed Mom and kept running.
Jessica Reed, 37, a registered dietitian from Athens, Ohio, entered Boston with anticipation that could, at best, be described as lukewarm: "After doing Ironman, I didn't think Boston was such a big whoop." The cheers of the crowd changed her mind. Never in any of the triathlons she had run had Reed encountered such crowd support. That plus the signs many of the spectators held.
"You Are Not Almost There!"
"Toenails Are For Wusses!"
"26.2: Because 26.3 Would Be CRAZY!"
John Munro also was amazed by the energy flowing from everyone standing by the side of the road: "These weren't spectators, they were supporters, who screamed their heads off, who waved funny placards, who said something like, ˜That isn't sweat, it's awesome leaking out.' These were supporters who screamed so loudly at Wellesley College, you could hear them a half-mile before you saw them."
The half-marathon was just past Wellesley College in the town of the same name. The belly of the snake had now reached that point in the Boston Marathon.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
The Ashland Hills
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners.
The several miles between Hopkinton and Ashland present a unique challenge for Boston marathoners. The challenge comes from the downhill tilt of these early miles. Boston is a downhill course, dropping from 462 feet above sea level on the starting line to 16 feet above sea level on the final run-in at Boylston Street. Among the steepest areas is the first half-mile, nearly a 150-foot drop in elevation, almost a toboggan slide that can get runners in trouble if they run the slide too fast. As much a problem are the several miles continuing from Hopkinton through Ashland and into Framingham: rolling, but rolling more downhill than uphill. Suddenly, runners find themselves moving way faster than their planned pace, a serious tactical mistake for anyone hopeful of running a time equal to or faster than their BQ, the qualifying time that had gotten them into the 2013 Boston Marathon.
Checking their watches at Ashland, smart runners realize this and throttle back, saving energy for the challenging uphill miles to come later, particularly the four hills that culminate with Heartbreak Hill in Newton. Or maybe they do not recognize their mistake until Framingham. Or maybe Newton, by which time it is too late. They are cooked. The four Newton hills will destroy them. And if not then, the subtle downhill from Cleveland Circle at about 22 miles to Kenmore Square at about 25 miles will pound their quadriceps muscles to mush, making the final 385 yards into the finish line on Boylston Street not happy yards. "If I only had paced myself better," is the cry of defeated runners as they soak in tubs after returning to their hotels.
Among those recognizing the dangers that the Boston course presented was Carissa von Koch. She described the first mile as a crowded mile: "My plan was to start conservatively. I had no desire to weave through the crowds. Passing would have been impossible had I tried anyway. We were packed in tight."
So tight that von Koch failed to spot the sign signifying she had run one mile. Her watch, a Garmin Forerunner 305, beeped to alert her. Glancing at the screen, she was disappointed that the display screen showed a time of 7:58. She had hoped to run between 7:30 and 7:35 for the first half of the race. If her Garmin could be believed, she had lost nearly 30 seconds off her planned pace. More the bother, she had lost it on the steepest downhill of the entire 26.2-mile course! Von Koch quickly realized that, hemmed in by the crowds, she had no choice but to relax and accept the pace dictated by those surrounding her. Days later, when she posted her Boston memories to the Internet, von Koch had rationalized away those lost seconds:
"It's tempting to start the race and go out too fast on the downhill. This is hard on your legs and will come back to haunt you later in the race. I had been advised again and again to start out slow so I played it safe. The next few miles went smoothly. It was still really crowded, but the continued downhills allowed me to hit my paces."
Erica Greene also had been warned about the downhills by her coach Fred Treseler, who had spoken at a Sunday morning breakfast for the charity Team Eye and Ear. Treseler had offered two recommendations for the early miles:
- Start off slow.
- Do not let the crowd distract you from your pace.
As the runners surrounding Greene crossed the border between the towns of Hopkinton and Ashland at about two miles, those words of Treseler continued to echo in her ears.
Jen Marr described her thoughts during the first few miles in almost a stream-of-consciousness:
It was a hard race from the start.
Mile 1, a side ache:
Are you kidding me? Now?
I remembered from my training:
Blow it out hard.
Push against your ribs.
Don't think about it.
Blow it out some more.
Soon it was gone.
Heather Lee-Callaghan later would recall the spectators: "There were spectators lined completely on both sides, even in the early miles. We ran past kids with hands reaching out for high fives. I high-fived probably 25 people coasting down the first hill. I felt like a rock star."
Lee-Callaghan ran with an iPod, but did not even turn it on until past five miles. "There was enough music coming from off the course. I must have heard the theme from Rocky 20 times." Lee-Callaghan decided that the next time she ran Boston, she would leave her iPod back in the hotel.
She came to the 10-kilometer checkpoint, near the Framingham train depot. Lee-Callaghan knew that friends were tracking her times online, "so every time I saw a chip mat, I ran fast toward it and stomped on the mat." She did not know why. "Not like it would show my status quicker or faster." Her time at the 10-K checkpoint mats was 48:44, putting her far behind Rita Jeptoo and Shalane Flanagan, who had crossed the same mats together in 36:04 and 36:05.
It was approximately 11:12 a.m. when Lee-Callaghan foot-stomped the 10-K mat. At that same time of day, the lead women runners, given their head start, were into the Newton hills, closing on the 30-K mat. The women were in the same race, and yet they were not - but that did not concern Heather Lee-Callaghan. Slapping hands and listening to the music, she was having too much fun.
The hard running for her, and so many others, had not yet begun.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
4:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
04:09:43
THOOM!!! The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels.
THOOM!!!
The first bomb exploding was loud, unbelievably loud, unbearably loud, piercingly loud. Rock concerts, fireworks, gunfire, dragster racing, space shuttle launches: All produce noise levels approaching 150 decibels. The explosion on the north side of Boylston Street most certainly was near that level. That is loud enough to cause serious ear damage, even to pierce eardrums. Several runners unlucky enough to be near the first explosion realized several weeks later that they still could not hear out of their left ears. They were not bleeding, they had not been struck by shrapnel, they were not among the count of "victims," but they were among the injured, even though they failed to realize that fact at the time.
A wide-angle image published several days later in the New York Times captured the moment of horror. The image came not from a photograph, but from the WBZ-TV broadcast of the race. Several dozen finishing runners appear in the image. A diligent researcher at the Times dutifully recorded many of their names, tagging them for online viewers: Vivian Adkins. Hillary Anderson. Alan Hagyard. Joe Curcio. Demi Clark. Those are just a few, and none of them yet have reacted to the horror. Tracy McGuire is in the photo just in front of Adkins, although the Times failed to tag her. A yellow explosion behind the barricades, behind the row of flags beside the course, behind the spectators. The cloud of smoke had not yet started to rise over the heads of those who would be critically hurt. The time on the finish line clock shows 4:09:43, indelibly setting that time in the minds of all runners, not merely those shown in the picture, not merely those who had finished, not merely the 23,000 who started Boston that day, but every runner, you, all of you, every one of you, everybody reading this book.
The horror! The horror!
4:09:43.
And 13 seconds after that:
THOOM!!!
The second bomb exploded with a noise as piercing as the first. Because the explosion was farther down the course, away from the mass of photographers hovering over the finish line, it was not recorded as readily by the Times and other news sources. On CNN and other channels that over the next several weeks would play and replay and replay the images of horror surrounding 4:09:43, the second explosion appears only as a cloud of smoke in the distance.
But it was no less real.
And the sport of running never again would be the same.
Learn more about 4:09:43.
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