And so much has already happened this week… Boston, of course. Chino Hills Trail Half. All kinds of lawmaking going on, side/pet projects picking up momentum, and I have a new running partner. All in the span of Sunday, Monday, Tuesday! My goodness!
Today, I’ll break my Boston silence (I haven’t talked about Boston anywhere, not online or in person, really), and save the rest for another day.
My initial reaction… it’s hard for me to admit or put this in writing, but it’s true, I was not shocked. I found out via a breaking news update push notification from the Huffington Post app about 15 minutes after the explosions, and my initial reaction was, “Of course some asshole bombed the Boston Marathon.” I mean really, with the events of the last 15-20 years in this country, was anybody really so surprised? I know that may come off cold or jaded, but stay with me.
My second response was the realization that I actually knew many people who were at activities related to the event, some immediate friends and, if you go out to the second degree of Kevin Bacon, about 35 people to specifically wonder and worry about. But through social media, I found out about the majority of them pretty quickly and went on to reading online media coverage.
My third thought, and these first three were all pretty rapid fire, but this one stuck in my mind over the course of the afternoon, and remains even now, was can you imagine?
It’s the Boston Marathon, a goal some people work for years to achieve. Can you imagine, all the BQ attempts, all the training, the excitement, and the race, and approaching the finish, and then BOOM!!! A bomb, and the next thing you know, you’re at the ER getting a foot amputated. You are a runner, a marathoner, at the finish of a pinnacle achievement and a doctor is cutting off your foot.
Cutting off your foot because some asshole wanted to rain on the parade. Quite literally — shrapnel, ball bearings, and nails rained down on the parade of runners and spectators.
Now, I don’t know that this specific story happened to anyone, I think the image manifested itself from reading in the initial reports of doctors performing amputations on runners still wearing their race bibs. But this is the train of thought that kept cycling through my mind the rest of the day. When I imagine that happening, to anyone, even my worst enemy… there are no words.
My final thought, as the live updates slowed and the reactions started showing up in social media, was this:
If you’re trying to defeat the human spirit, marathoners are the wrong group to target.
And I’m glad to see that this seems to be the general consensus of the running community. In fact, when I logged on to my running club’s forum yesterday afternoon, someone else had already posted that exact thought.
Marathoners don’t quit. We may slow down, but we don’t quit. In the face of bad weather, injury, illness, fatigue, even bombings, once we cross the start, we just keep going until we get to the finish.
This person(s), whoever they are, is just that. An asshole, a bully. And since when do marathoners let assholes, bullies, or even the well-intentioned-but-doubtful-friend-who-cares (“are you sure running that far is healthy…”), get in the way of their goals?
They don’t.
So you know what I did Monday night after work?
I went to the running store to shop for trail running shoes, because I have at least 4 more marathons to train for and 8 more halfs to run this year.
And maybe, by the end of it, I’ll have a BQ 😉
Joga Gernal 