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The Straight Story

(48,121 posts)
Mon Apr 15, 2013, 11:29 PM Apr 2013

It’s Ours, And You Can’t Take It Away: One Runner’s Thoughts on the Boston Marathon Attacks

It’s Ours, And You Can’t Take It Away: One Runner’s Thoughts on the Boston Marathon Attacks

8:16 PM ET, April 15, 2013

A few yards away from me right now there’s a television playing a persistent, yelling broadcast in the manner of cable news after a shocking disaster: Yelling. Yelling over yelling. Posturing. Speculation. In the wake of the double bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon earlier today, no one still knows what’s happened, or the full extent of the casualties, or even whether everything they’ve been reporting all evening has been fully true. Somewhere in there, desperate to fill the airwaves with new ideas, they have peppered the programming with some new commentators, one of whom is right now speculating that the Boston Marathon will never be the same, that security will be through-the-roof next year, and that perhaps the race’s historically packed attendance levels may see a precipitous drop in the wake of the attacks.

Oh, you don’t go there.

I don’t know why anyone, or any group of people, had the twisted motivation to commit this attack. Maybe we’ll know by the morning, when I wake up and quickly check the news before lacing up my sneakers for five miles around the local waterfront park. Maybe we won’t know for days or even weeks, and cable news will be yelling louder and more confusedly because they’ve run out of things to speculate. But one thing, for those of us who run, is clear: Whoever chose one of the world’s greatest distance running events for both amateurs and professionals as the target of a terrorist attack will most certainly not convince a single one of us to stop running.

Rest is here:
https://medium.com/running/af611c72a9d3

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