Sacramento Running News

While this website is devoted to Sacramento related running stories, it is hard to return to these pages without at least mentioning the bombing at the Boston Marathon.

The alleged perpetrators have been captured or killed, but the road to recovery for those injured in the attacks, and the friends and family of those hurt or killed, will be long.

I watched the news unfold from three thousand miles away and it feels a bit narcissistic for me to be writing about how the attack affected me.

However, last week it seemed that every runner I spoke with talked about how profoundly the attack had impacted them personally and emotionally. This was especially true among friends who had run that marathon in the past. So clearly I was not alone in this feeling of strangely personal grief.

At first, I was worried about my many, many friends who were running the marathon that day. Slowly, they checked in via Facebook and text messages. Some were done and gone. Some were in the finish area and eyewitnesses to the chaos. Others were still out on the course, or being stopped by police as they neared the finish.

I relaxed a bit as everyone I knew had reported in safely. Then, as it became clear that most all of the victims were spectators I became more upset at the pure meanness of hurting those who were out supporting the runners and cheering on people they didn’t even know.

All of us who run marathons know that while we put in the hours of training, our family and friends encourage us, listen to us whine about our black toenails and other weird running ailments, pick up the slack at home, and then come out and selflessly crew for us and cheer us on in our self-centered pursuit of athletic glory.

At races like Boston, these friends and family and other nice people line the course and breathe life and joy into the event. They are the ones who turn a long run into an experience worth having. We runners get the accolades, but these are the people who allow us to pursue our moments of glory, and make them glorious.

Yes, tragic incidents like these remind us that life is short and we should live with a keen awareness of our brief existence. But perhaps we should also take a moment to reflect and thank our friends and family for  allowing us our self-centered pursuit and for rejoicing in our achievements. As generous as they are, they’ll probably shrug off the thanks, but trust me, they’ll appreciate it.

If you want to donate to the victims, here is The One Fund.

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I’m not the first person to write about this. Erin Gloria Ryan, writing at Jezebel, has an excellent essay in this same vein.