This year, the 67-year-old from Spokane, Washington is one of 36,000 runners – 9,000 more than last year – and an estimated 1 million spectators coming back to the 26.2-mile (42.2-km) course to wipe away the gruesome memories of last year when three people were killed and more than 260 were hurt.
“I have some unfinished business to complete here,” she said before the race on Monday.
Runners and spectators sounded a defiant note on a sunny Monday morning as the 118th race began, vowing to reclaim the event as the joyous family-friendly event it has long been.
Lining up at various checkpoints near the finish line, spectators silently waited for bags to be inspected and cheered loudly as Boston police cruised the course on bikes.
Marsha Quimby, seated at the corner of Boylston and Exeter streets, staked out the same spot where she stood last year just a few feet from the exploding bombs. Despite a fevered rush to leave the route in 2013, she did not hesitate to return and cheer her husband, who is running.
“I feel perfectly safe,” she said. “There is a lot of enthusiasm this year and there are a lot of people here now who might not have come otherwise.”
One of those is Pam Black, who made her first trip to Boston to cheer her goddaughter near the finish line.
“I feel safer here than in the ballpark in Arlington, Texas,” she said with a laugh.
Still, last year’s destruction was never far from spectators’ memories. At the running store Marathon Sports, where the first bomb exploded, a wreath to commemorate the dead and victims stood in the window with wilted flowers at its base before the race.
Business was brisk. Szilvia Egan, visiting from Dubai, was buying a pair fluorescent yellow New Balance sneakers.
“I’ve got very good running shoes, but it is Boston. It is sentimental,” Egan said.
Down the street at Old South Church, parishioners spent days before the race handing out thousands of hand-knitted scarves in blue and yellow, the marathon’s official colours, to give the athletes an “extra dose of love and affection this year,” said Marilyn Jackson Adams, who came up with the idea of knitting the scarves in February. They came from 50 states and 11 countries.
At the medical tent where so many victims were treated last year before being shuttled off to hospitals, more than 1,000 medical personnel went through final preparations before the first runners were scheduled to arrive.
Dr. Melissa Kohn, an emergency physician who specializes in race medicine, recalled that last year she was putting an intravenous line into a runner when the bombs exploded. She hoped for less drama this year.
“I would much rather be sitting around being bored than having another disaster,” Kohn said.
The horde of specialists, including cardiologists, orthopaedic surgeons and psychiatrists, are prepared for whatever happens, she said.
“Everything has been painstakingly planned, and we are ready,” Kohn said.
There are more staff and supplies this year, in part because the field of runners is so large, she said.
An emotional call for the city to recover was sounded by many of the racers themselves, including some elite competitors.
Ryan Hall, the fastest American to enter the race, said, “They may have hurt us, they may have knocked us down, but as a result we are stronger and more united.”
Meb Keflezighi became the first U.S. male athlete to win the Boston Marathon in three decades on Monday, the first running of the race since last year’s fatal bombing attack.
Keflezighi, who was born in Eritrea but is now a U.S. citizen, set an official time of two hours, eight minutes and 37 seconds.
Wilson Chebet of Kenya finished second and compatriot Frankline Chepkwony was third.
American runner Meb Keflezighi said memories of the victims of last year’s bomb attack carried him through the last, difficult miles of this year’s Boston Marathon.
The Californian shocked observers on Monday by becoming the first American man since 1983 to win the world-renowned race, over a field of younger East African favourites.
“This is probably the most meaningful victory for an American, just because of what happened here last year,” the 38-year-old told reporters shortly after breaking the tape.
“Those four victims, we can’t get them back, and those people that were injured by the same token, I wanted to use their energy to win it,” said Keflezighi, who ran with the names of three bombing victims and a university police officer who authorities say was shot dead by the bombers three days later, written on his race number in marker.
Keflezighi covered the race’s hilly 26.2 miles (42.2. km)with a personal best time of two hours, eight minutes and 37 seconds, narrowly defeating Kenyan Wilson Chebet, 28, who nipped at his heels during the final miles.
“I kept thinking Boston strong, Boston strong, Meb strong, Meb strong,” he said, referring to the city’s unofficial motto since the bombing.
Keflezighi left his native Eritrea with his family when he was 12 years old, fleeing a war and a life of poverty and settling in southern California.
When he arrived in the United States, he discovered running and over the years became one of America’s most accomplished distance runners.
Among his biggest accomplishments, Keflezighi won the marathon silver medal for the United States at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, and in 2009 became the first American to win the New York Marathon in 27 years.
He withdrew from the Boston Marathon in 2013 due to an injury, but attended the race as a spectator. He was nearby when twin pressure cooker bombs ripped through the crowd at the finish line, killing three people and injuring more than 260.
“We were helpless, we just started crying,” Keflezighi said of the moments after the bombing. “I cried today too, but this time it was tears of joy.”
Keflezighi said he met with the father of 8-year-old bomb victim Martin Richard in the days before the race.
Of his own career, Keflezighi said he can’t ask for much more. “Up till now I’d say my career was 99.9 percent fulfilled. Today I’d say it is 110 percent fulfilled.”
