When people ask why I’m running the Boston Marathon again this year, the short answer is because I want to see the daffodils.
Last fall, volunteers planted 10,000 daffodil bulbs along the route from Hopkinton to Boston and I can’t think of a better symbol of hope and resilience than a 42.2-kilometre long garden.
It is not often in life that one gets an opportunity to have a redo. I had a good run last year, collected my medal and even had time to pose for a triumphant photograph before the chaos hit.
Although I was a safe distance from the finish line when the bombs exploded, I will never forget the sights and sounds of that day. I still get tense when I hear an ambulance. A fleet of ambulances was required to tend to the victims — three dead and more than 260 wounded, many of them left without limbs — and the noise of the sirens made us all painfully aware of the full extent of the calamity.
In the days following the race, shell-shocked Bostonians urged me to return to their city to run again, insisting the violence that day was an aberration. I believe it was. Not a jihad or well-organized terrorist plot — simply the result of two mentally ill young men who were particularly adept at making homemade explosives.
The venerable Boston Athletic Association has been organizing the race — the world’s oldest annual marathon with the most rigorous qualifying times — for 118 years. In true stiff-upper-lip fashion, the association has said nary a word about the bombing in their official emails and race packages sent to the 36,000 runners.
The attitude conveyed is “carry on and marathon,” to borrow from the slogan used in Britain during the Second World War to help Londoners cope with the Blitz. Runners are advised to prepare for extra security measures, such as a ban on bags and backpacks, but relatively little has changed.
Spectators are still expected to pack the streets along the route. The female students of Wellesley College will still line up to plant kisses on passing runners. As always, the elite runners will be focused on winning the race and recreational runners like me will be focused on improving their times.
Not to say that runners were unmoved by last year’s tragedy. Runners and others have raised more than $70 million through charity runs and direct donations to help bombing victims, in particular those facing a lifetime of disability and medical complications without the benefits of insurance. The Boston Public Health Commission is offering a series of counselling sessions with trained clinicians to help people cope with the anniversary of the bombings. And there will be plenty of memorial events taking place in the city in the days leading up to the race.
My favourite is the Marathon Scarf Project organized by Old South Church, located about 30 metres from the marathon’s finish line. Volunteers from around the world knitted scarves in the marathon’s official colours of royal blue and yellow, and at the Blessing of the Athletes service the day before the race, the congregation will hand out the scarves to wrap each runner in handmade love.
In the end, all sports are about symbolism. That’s why we play them and follow them with such passion and conviction. The Boston Marathon takes place at a time when spring on the East Coast coaxes the first flowers from the ground. The fact that this year’s run falls on Easter Monday makes the sense of renewal more poignant even to those of us who rarely set foot in a church.
I hope my return to Boston to run in the race will symbolically honour not only the bombing victims, but others who have triumphed over adversity. As any marathoner will tell you, the last 10 kilometres are always brutal, no matter how hard you trained. My race strategy this year will be to dedicate each of the last 10 kilometres to someone I love who overcame an obstacle — an impoverished childhood, a mental or physical disability, a bout with cancer, the death of a loved one — or any other unexpected loss.
The last kilometre will be purely for me, a joyful celebration that I’m alive and healthy and capable of running non-stop for more than 40 kilometres. Sometimes in life, you get a second chance, and for that, I’m eternally grateful.
Susan Danard is a former Times Colonist reporter.
