Sigh.

anotherrunner.com

Watching events unfold at the Boston Marathon yesterday was terrifying, appalling, and sickeningly mesmerizing. I had a friend that's put so much on the line to run two of her dream marathons before going back to "normal" running in order to allow some of that training time to return her to her family. She wanted to conquer both the New York City Marathon and the Boston Marathon and had worked incredibly hard to qualify for both. The day before her flight to NYC, Hurricane Sandy hit and obliterated any chance of a normal life for many folks in the city for awhile, including a massive marathon.

Saddened, but determined, she turned her attention to Boston and was determined to make it the best race she could. Her family, including her two young girls, would be on hand for a rare chance to root her on (they live outside the US). I was so excited for her and was watching her progress
on the race's online tracking website. I knew she had completed the run in amazing time and was high-fiving her in the comfort of my living room, far, far away.

NY Daily News

Some time later, I turned on the TV to see if maybe I could spot her and her family, only to see bombs going off and people down on the ground. I have no words for how I felt at that moment.

There were many of us tracking our pal, and word got out rather quickly (although it didn't feel like it at the time) that she, her husband, and kids were okay. There had been a scare when she'd heard the booms from her hotel room and the rest of her family wasn't in the room, but they found each other quickly and were locked down in the hotel as the horrible details drifted in. It was so good to hear her voice. So many similar scenarios were playing out as the families and friends of 27,000 runners from around the world, and anyone who knew anyone in Boston that day, tried to find out if the people they cared about were okay.

In the mix of such a tragedy, there is so much more than the lost lives and lost innocence - some of it petty, some of it heroic, some of it strangely normal. It's hard to know what to say without sounding patronizing, redundant, or not sincere or respectful enough. I'm glad my friends are okay, and I'm sorry that so many others weren't as lucky. I really, really hope we find the person who did this.

I thought the way Danielle, on The T-Rex Runner blog, discussed it pretty much summed up my views as well:

...My heart sank because I know what an amazing feeling it is to cross a marathon finish line. Many of the happiest moments of my life have happened at finish lines. Some of the most frustrating, too. The mix of emotions at the end of every race is complex enough without something like this. To think that this is how some people will remember finish lines forever is devastating to me...  

...My heart sank because so many of the injured are spectators – families and friends of the runners who came to watch and support their loved ones. As hard as training for a marathon, especially Boston, is, it is not just the runners who make sacrifices along the way...  

...My heart sank because I understand that Boston is the holy grail of marathons. It is something that many runners devote their lives to training for, in hopes of squeaking in with a qualifying time....  

 ...My heart sank because I’ve never met a runner that I didn’t like. Ok, that’s not necessarily true, but I’ve never met a runner that I couldn’t relate to, that I didn’t have something in common with... 

 ...My heart sank and swelled as I watched first responders run towards the scene...  

...My heart sank as I saw pictures of the runners who were stopped on the course so close to the finish line... 

...My heart sank because it makes no sense...  

 ...So we’re going to keep going, keep running, for the same reason many of us started – because running helps us make sense of things that don’t make sense. Because we get out of running exactly what we put into it, and there is a kind of peace in that. Because running brings us together in a way that no terrorist can tear apart...

For the whole entry click here. 

ibtimes.co.uk

We have yet another horrible event to learn from. To try to derive some meaning from. To remind us how tenuous our and our loved-ones lives really are. Live today. Love today. It's better than the alternative—we already know where hate gets us...

Martin Richard (2005-2013)