Day 171: April 19

from the newsdesk comes...
The Boston Marathon Bombings

4 hours, 9 minutes and 50 seconds into the Boston Marathon, held on Monday 15th April, 2 bombs went off. These bombs went off almost simultaneously and exploded very close to the finish line. Three people were killed and 175 people were injured, with numerous limbs being lost.
R.I.P
Krystle Campbell, 29, was identified as one of the three deaths in the explosion. When Krystle's parents first found out about the death, they were told that it was their daughters friend who had been killed, but later they learned, when they were allowed to see the patient that had survived, that the victim was their daughter.
Lingzi Lu, 23, was a Chinese graduate at Boston University and a victim to the horrific Boston Bombings. She had been watching the race with her two friends as the bomb went off. Lu was the pride of her parents, living in China, but now the grief of her death engulfs them like an unwanted hug.
Martin Richards, 8, was holding an ice-cream when the bombs went off. Richards was standing with his mother, Denise, and sister Jane when the bomb detonated. Martin his sister Jane has been waiting for their father to cross the finish line. The bomb went off, killing Martin. The bomb cost Jane, Martin's younger sister and a dancer at her school where Martin, her leg. Denise is currently in the hospital, recovering from head injuries. It is unknown how severe her injuries are.

Just picture this, if you will. You're running somewhere. It doesn't matter how far away this place is, but you've been practicing for this run. You've been training your ass off; you've even managed to eat healthy for the last couple of weeks. You're about 10-20m away from the finish line. You can see it - you can see the end you've been working towards. Suddenly there's an explosion and the wind is knocked out of you. You fall onto the ground and you can feel blood, but you keep blacking out. Its like the world is frozen and you're moving in very slow motion. The only sounds you can hear are sobs - are they your own? - and people yelling and screaming and you can hear little children wailing. There's police cars - you can hear the sirens. You look down. There's a pool of blood at the base of your right knee and your leg is hanging off by a piece of flesh. That leg - the same leg that has helped you through weeks and weeks of training - is now gone.

So many marathon runners - and other people - have lost their limbs. Imagine having a career or a hobby, in which one of your body parts is essential. Pretend you're an artist for a living. Now imagine only have one arm. Life would be about 100x harder.

My dad runs. He's maybe done about 38 marathons since he started running (about 12 years ago) and I think 2-3 ultra marathons. He writes down every race he runs, the distance, and the time he takes to run it. Sort of like me writing down every book I read, the author, the date and where its from. I always had dreams of myself and my dad running a marathon together and maybe that can still happen one day. Everytime he finishes a race, it still amazes me. To run 42.1 km is kind of like not real for me. It doesn't seem like a thing people do. To run 56 km or 86 km or 92 km (depending on the year) is even more unbelievable, but my dad's done The Two Oceans [three times?] (56km) and I'm pretty sure he's done the Comrades twice, both in the 86km years. When we can, we go and wait for him and cheer and yell like crazy when he comes around the corner in his tattered old VOB shirt and short running pants, sweating, but still waving at us as as he passes. When we were younger, my sisters and I would run the last 100m (ish) with my dad to cross the finish line. We play 'spot dad' when it comes around to the time we should see him and when we see him come towards us, we always get so excited and I'm so proud and its just a great day for all of us. I can just imagine my dad running when he's 80 years old - he'll still be wearing his VOB shirt and it'll be even more tattered and he'll be jogging along and this time maybe I'll be jogging alongside with him.

The Boston bombing comes a lot closer to home than it comes across. Its like one of the association things where you go "well a does this so b does this". In this case, it's "well my dad does marathons so there's gonna be a bomb". Which not going to happen - I know this - but my brain immediately associates the word marathon with my dad and then the bombings. Its like when you hear someone has died from an ecstasy overdose and then you immediately think of all the people you know that have ever taken any drugs in their life.