Running on sad

I confess  to stalking the Boston marathon site at work yesterday. I was monitoring the progress of a friend who was running her first Boston, someone who has been such a great mentor to me back when I got into running a few years ago.

She did great, btw. She is an amazing runner and a tough bird. She overcame injury setbacks and has kids who are two and four, so juggled her running between pregnancies, which is not easy. She is also an amazing writer, so I'll share her blog post when she writes her race story.

And now she will have an even more extraordinary tale to tell after yesterday's bombings at Boston. (She is okay, thank goodness).

Watching the tape we have all now seen of the blast near the finish line, I keep thinking about a couple of things.

I run marathons and so do many of my friends. That feeling of being just seconds away from crossing a finish line is such a blur. I always feel like total crap and all I want is to cross that mother and never run again. I never hear the announcer call my name or notice anything going on around me. My thought watching the blast was how confusing that must have been for the runners -- how would you even process what was going on?

But I really keep thinking about the spectators, which is who got hurt the worst and as we know, even killed. Spectators especially during something as grueling as a marathon are so essential. I don't have to know you. I'm so grateful that you're there.

During my first marathon, Chicago 2007, spectators were the ones who got us water and Gatorade when the marathon ran out on a day that hot to 89 degrees. One of them held a hose for us to run under and drink out of.

At the St Louis marathon the following year, I high-fived little kids all along the route. At Rockford in 2010, a nice lady kindly ran into her house and got me a cup of ice -- I was nauseous and stuffed the ice into my bra and hat, which cooled me off and helped the nausea. Later, at mile 23, a picnicking family let me stick my grubby hand in their cooler full of food and take ice. I'm sure I smelled horrible but they were so nice about it.

The point is obvious -- spectators rock, even when they stand there and yell "you're almost done!" at mile 20 -- when you have six more miles to go and you're hitting the wall and hate everyone and everything.

My favorite is the little kids who hold up signs "Go Mommy!" and "My daddy is a rock star!" along the road. I've always figured I will plant some of those signs in my kids' hands when they get a little bigger.

I ran this morning in the pre-dawn hours with friends, all of us marathoners and some of us parents. The solitude and quietness of the morning, our footfalls and chatter the only noises we could hear, seemed so far away from what happened yesterday. And yet, it's very close.

The runner in me is heartbroken that a peaceful, wholesome event like a marathon -- Boston!! -- could be marred like this. The human in me can't get her head around another horrific tragedy in a country that seems more and more violent. But the mama in me can't bear the idea that a child who was watching for his dad to finish the race was killed. That's where it really hits home.