Mark's story, part 1

These are the words that Mark painfully typed on his phone after the race...he is a slow typer and the android keyboard is a killer, so punctuation and fixing mistakes is a pain. Please excuse any spelling or punctuation errors.  I left it exactly as he typed it.

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I greatly appreciate everyones concern, thoughts and prayers for my family and myself. It was very crazy and unusual day yesterday and I wasn't able to respond fully to many and I apologize. My thoughts still aren't fully coherent but i'll try to give you all a better description of the physical and emotional roller coaster of yesterday.

First as you all know I have a passion for racing the marathon as fast as possible. I try to race a spring and fall marathon to give the body adequate recovery to go after the next one 100%.  My goal and strong desire is to have one race in my life faster than 3 hours. 

Last fall I was running faster than ever, we had a fairly flat marathon picked in Indianapolis where i hoped to achieve this. 7 weeks before the marathon I got severe IT band issues that shut me down from that race. I thought I was past that phase, but over the last 3 weeks my IT band has been giving me great grief again. So my point here is that I was very concerned I might not be able to run this race also. Fortunately it didnt get as bad as last fall, but it is still not right.  So I went into this race in a fragile state of mind not knowing if my body would even hold together until the finish. Not the state of mind you want to be in before pushing yourself as hard as you can  to race for 26.2 miles.

So when we got to Boston i was taking the marathon seriously to stay off my feet as much as possible, stretching and icing and praying.

So yesterday morning I woke up at 4:45am(yes 1:45 Oregon time) to get to the bus pick up where they take us to the start. The race doesnt start until 10 but there are logistics to getting 27,000 people to the start in the small town of Hopkinton on a narrow road.

At the athletes village in Hopkinton they kept announcing that there are dogs around being trained and not to touch them without the permission
Of the owners.  Yes it struck my brother Stephen and I as odd but we had a lot bigger things on our mind and really didnt pay much attention.  At the start and during the race my muscle under my right IT band was incredibly tight.  I felt stronger than ever and went out at what truly felt to be an easy pace(6:40-6:45 miles). At about mile 12 my quads were trashed. I was at 1:30 at the half.   It was a very tough grind to hold it together for the rest of the race.  My body was out of sync.  Both calves were on the verge of cramping, my hamstrings quads just awful.  My lower back for the last 10 miles was cramping.  I had trouble even rotating to grab cups as I ran through the water stations. My body was in bad shape.  The hills from mile 16-21 were absolutely awful. It was such an emotional relief to finally cross the finish at 3:15. A respectable time that also qualifies me again to come back and do this again next year. Bring it on!!!!

So I could barely walk.  After walking about 100 yards or so I started to get lightheaded and was loosing my thought process. Three people started taking me to the medical tent.  A few minutes later as I got close to the medical tent I could tell my thought process was getting better and the lightheadedness was fading so I told them I was fine and they walked me back to the snack area.  

The wind was blowing I was cold and shivering. I collected my bag from the bus and got my warm clothes on.  I went to the family waiting area letter "d" which was a block over and a block down from where the explosions occurred.

With the brain being depleted of sugar the thought process really is in slow motion. I called my wife to see if my bro had crossed yet. He hadnt. So I started to wander toward where they were watching the race which was centered between where the 2 blasts ended up being. As i was heading that direction i made a turn up a blocked off road that delayed my trip.  As I worked slowly toward jill joel and aubrey and my brothers families watching the race jill called and said they were on their way to the family greeting area. I always love to watch racers finish it is so awesome and emotional to see the accomplishment.  Jill said a couple of the kids had to go to the bathroom, my brother had crossed the finish line and so they left. So I turned around and made my way back to family meeting area. I sat on the curb and waited a few minutes.

Jill came and sat down by me then we heard this loud boom. A few seconds later another boom.  We said to each other that sounded like a bomb.  We looked around and didnt see any panic.  Everyone seemed a little like what was that,  but just carrying on like normal.  A few minutes later my brother came up to us.  He said that there was an explosion behind him.  Maybe 100 yards behind him.  He hadnt even received the food they always give runners. They were sent on. He barely got his personal belongings before they cleared that area. 

So we then knew there had been a couple explosions but had now idea accidental or what.  Then the sirens started.   Initially didn't think too much because ambulance sirens aren't an unusual noise at Marathons. But then there was more and more and more and I think that was the initial response this was bad. And then as it continued we realizes this is real bad. In front of our hotel they had a staging area for ambulances as far as you could see. And they just kept coming. Vehicles were coming in from all over.  The brain really couldnt comprehend or process that what was going on was real.  The medical tent is just a diagonal from our hotel.  We were standing at the street corner trying to figure this all out.  We could see the ambulances going from the staging area to the medical tent. And all sorts of vehicles with siren on coming from everywhere.

We were very wisely advised from our favorite secret service agent to get in our hotel room and hunker down.  After we got in our hotel and were looking out the windows by the elevators on the 22nd floor we heard 3 more booms.  That was a bit freaky.  We later were told that was just the police detonating some suspicious things.

So two stinky runners and our families hunkered down in our ground zero hotel room.  Jills and my phones were both dead so we took turns on the charger. The officials shut off cell phone calls we could text and email. I tried calling my parents a few times not knowing at the time cell phones were shut off.

Usually after a marathon a shower is one of the first things on the agenda.  We were just trying to figure out what to do watching the news and looking at all the police, bombsquads,swat, and a lot of strange vehicles outside our hotel. Hundreds of police/military and hundreds of vehicles. And endless sirens.

With the craziness going my brother decided to get a room at our hotel. He called and reserved it. He went downstairs to get keys and the lobby and restaurants were all vacated. Thats when we found out the hotel was in lockdown.

Even having witnessed what we witnessed I am still in denial that this really occurred.   Stuff like this doesnt happen here.

Definitely an emotional roller coaster.  I do know gods hand kept my brother,  his family and my family safe.  So many things could have happened to us with small differences in the day.  We do count ourselves blessed.  At the same time we mourn for the victims and their families.  We also mourn for the loss of innocence, peace  and security that this tragic event may bring.

Thanks again for your thoughts and prayers