I’m trying to make sense of things, so this is going to ramble even more than normal. When I became interested in running marathons, I heard about Boston. It has a mystique, a reputation beyond other mass-participation races. You need to qualify for it and the qualifying standards are high. You need to be a very good club-standard runner to get to the start line. What happens then is up to you. The course is net downhill and very quick on a good day. You run past Wellesley College and I’m told there is nothing quite like a Wellesley girl. You need to cope with Heartbreak Hill towards the end of the course when you’re really beginning to feel it. It’s the oldest marathon race in the world and it’s on the bucket list of lots of us who run marathons.
And now it’s changed for ever.
A cunttard or cunttards unknown have attacked the Boston Marathon. Cowardly cunttards. Cunttards with access to pressure cookers, nails and ball bearings. Cunttards who can follow a schematic downloaded from the internet. Hateful and hate-filled. Weak, pathetic little cunttards who can’t attract attention for their cause. Ineffective cunttards, incapable of persuading people by the force of their argument so he or they build a couple of bombs and left them in black holdalls to detonate near the finish of a race. A race. In spite of it being the Boston Marathon it was just a race. And it was the spectators and supporters who took the fullest force of the blast.
As runners we rely on our family and friends for all sorts of support. We shouldn’t have to rely on them as shields against bomb blasts. It’s all just so fucking horrible and pointless. There is nothing, nothing which warrants such an attack. It’s affected me more than other attacks because it was at a race. I suppose that from the point of view of cunttards, that’s job done. Except they haven’t claimed responsibility or tried to explain their fucked up reasoning. They lack even that little confidence in their convictions.
There is a problem in all this, apart from all the obvious ones about blowing people’s legs off with bombs made from pressure cookers and nails just to make a point. If these bombs had gone off in a market in Pakistan, we wouldn’t have heard quite so much about it. And I’m not going to go into state violence because frankly, the whole thing sickens me and I can no longer bear to think about it. I run in part to escape from the dark thoughts and the anger which used to drive me. At the moment all I feel is sadness.
Brilliant Rich, spot on with what I feel, with what everyone I train with feels and what all my supporters feel. I feel for those that ran whose loved one suffered for merely supporting. It’s an act of cowardice to attack something that requires so much courage, to attack those that are cheering and supporting and to attack something that has no political agenda. Like you I run to forget about the evil in the world… Brilliant blog!
Thank you, Warren. The trouble with trying to make sense of the senseless is that there is nothing to hold onto. You end up senseless yourself. I am in awe of everyone who ran towards the explosions. I think it’s easier to come to make sense of it all with those people in mind and not some anonymous and fearful wretch in hiding from the FBI for the rest of his life out of jail.
Absolutely agree. It’s utterly disgusting. And not to even have the guts to admit responsibility makes it that much worse for the victims and injured. (Instinct suggests that it’s domestic US rather than foreign, but….). One of my friends was handing out finishing medals a block from the finish line. She was trampled, but is alive. Others not so lucky. Thoughts particularly with the family of Krystle, whose mum is a colleague of a friend. But we don’t need to know the dead or injured to feel absolute revulsion at what these despicable people have done – to a great race and a great city and great people. No one deserves this.
We live in a village, really. Even though it’s a big village with seven billion inhabitants, we’re all connected somehow. It’s events like this which make those connections visible. I sympathise with the families of the victims, the dead and the injured perhaps a little more than I would have had this happened at a baseball game and that in turn makes me feel slightly guilty.
You’re right, Alex. Nobody deserves this.