Personal Best begins with a day I'll never forget: April 15, 2013, the day terror struck the Boston Marathon.
Following is an excerpt of the chapter entitled, 'Was That Thunder?'
WAS THAT
THUNDER?
A good day
to run a marathon is usually a bad day to watch a marathon.
That was not the case on April 15, 2013.
The day broke with a deep blue sky; a chilly wind
fluttered from the west, the air was dry.
An endless procession of yellow school buses
departed from the Boston Common to begin the journey along the Mass Pike to the
village of Hopkinton, the center of the running world on Patriot’s Day.
My morning began in an unusual manner. Preparing
to run the Boston Marathon for the sixteenth time, my wife and I decided that,
rather than deal with the crowds at the bus loading area, she would transport
me to the athletes’ village, drive back to the train station at Riverside, and
later assume her place near the finish line on Boylston Street.
At the toll plaza, buses were lined up like
yellow jackets at the hive, and despite some congestion on narrow country
roads, we reached the quaint “Welcome to Hopkinton, Incorporated in 1715” road
sign by 7:30 a.m. In the forested area on the edge of town, placards nailed to
the trees bore the warning, “No Stopping Monday.” Between the words,
“Stopping,” and “Monday,” was the image of a runner breaking the finish line
tape.
Within three blocks of the athletes’ village, all
roads were barricaded, and as my wife and I exchanged farewells, an achy, empty
feeling of loneliness enveloped me, even as I approached a small city of more
than 23,000 runners. I stood, motionless, for a few moments, as her car faded
to a small silver dot. On a magnificent mid-April morning, something didn’t
feel quite right to me.
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