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Four hours, 10 minutes, 16 seconds. That’s the time stamped next to Roger McMillin’s name at the Boston Marathon this year.
Maybe it shouldn’t matter this year, but to McMillin, it does.
The retired chief judge of the Mississippi State Court of Appeals needed to break 4:10 to automatically qualify for a return trip to Boston to run in the 2014 marathon.
He was well on his way when he heard the first explosion rock the area near the finish line. Then the second.
“The first thing I remember was over on the side where the bomb went off,” McMillin said. “They were trying to get the barricades apart and they couldn’t. There were people falling over, people trying to climb over, people basically climbing over each other to get out. I saw one guy with his leg twisted up in and around the metal. I thought he’d end up with a broken leg, or maybe worse than that.”
Away from the chaos, trying to find his belongings took nearly an hour of shuffling down alleyways, looking for a route to safety, to say nothing of the bus where his things were being held.
He found them. Dug his cellphone out of his bag to call his daughter, Sally, who was standing near Mile 21 — at Heartbreak Hill — to watch her dad make the climb for the third time. She was safe.
McMillin compares the high of running Boston to being invited to step onto the field moments before the Super Bowl starts.
“You’ve got all these elite runners, who are incredible,” he said. “And for a little while at least, you’re on the track with them for the same race. An incredible event. An incredible experience.”
No newcomer to marathons, McMillin ran his first one, the Chicago Marathon, on Oct. 10, 2010.
“Ten-ten-ten,” McMillin said. “I’ll always remember that one.”
This one, too.
He finished at 2:51 p.m. He would have easily beaten the 4:10 mark had he not slowed when the bombs went off. But his time — 4:10:16 — doesn’t worry him all that much.
“I’ll go run something else and get the time,” he said. “Beforehand, I wanted to qualify to come back but I wasn’t sure I would come back if I did. Now that all this has transpired, I have a fierce determination to come back one way or another.
“It’s a tremendous part of the fabric of our country and we need to do what it takes to preserve it.”
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Sean Haggerty was the last official finisher at the 2013 Boston Marathon.
It wasn’t because he was the slowest.
The New Hampshire state police sergeant stopped before the finish line to help spectators who were wounded in the bombing. When he finally crossed, at 2:57 p.m. on Monday, he was pushing an injured woman to the medical tent in a wheelchair. He did not know he was the last one to record a time until he was told by a reporter three days later.
“I consider myself not completing the race. I didn’t run to the finish line. I ran to offer assistance to those that needed it,” said Haggerty, who reluctantly agreed to be interviewed this week.
“When I did have an opportunity, later on, to use someone’s cellphone to call my wife and let her know that I was OK, she said she figured that I was because she got the (automated) text message that I had finished. I corrected her and said, ‘I didn’t finish, I didn’t make it to the finish line.’”
He did, but only after he had helped several of the wounded. Haggerty seemed reluctant to talk to a reporter, and said several times during the interview, “I did what hundreds of other people did that day.
“I just happened to be in a position to help,” he said. “I saw the initial blast and immediately thought of the evil in the world, but the response showed me that there is a bright spot to it and that is the actions of all the people that I was able to work beside. Those people that I saw who responded were not B.A.A. officials, they were not emergency responders, although they acted extraordinarily. They were ordinary people that were there to watch the race.”
Haggerty helped, too.
He borrowed someone’s belt and tied it around a woman’s leg to help stop the bleeding. He said he has a way to get in touch with the injured woman, when the time is right.
“The focus should be on those people whose lives will be changed forever,” he said. “I’ll always remember and think about the people that lost their lives. I’ll always remember and think about the people that go on with their lives; it will be a bigger challenge for them.
“I’ll think about that next year,” he said.
Because he will be back.
“It’s obviously changed the Boston Marathon forever,” said Haggerty, who has run Boston nine times, including the last five. “I certainly will be back next year, for a number of reasons, one of which is that I don’t feel at all afraid to return to Boston. I’m confident in the law enforcement folks that are protecting the marathon and other events, not only in Boston but other parts of the world.”
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The Finish Line: What the bombing was like - Yahoo! News
1. They kept tracking finish times after the bombs?
2. The marathon organizers are seriously going to consider 17 seconds of post-bombing time when qualifying runners to the next one?
Princeton University mom and alumna Susan Patton defended her call for women students to marry before they graduate during a talk on campus on April 18, 2013.
Oren Fliegelman
