Community Corner

Westchester Marathoner: 'I Dodged a Bullet'

Local runner misses Boston race for first time in a decade; her father treats the injured; two acquaintances lost legs.

For Elizabeth Thompson of Scarsdale, this year's Boston Marathon would have been her tenth time running the grueling, 26-mile race.

But a missed flight in Chicago left the local athlete stranded when the starters' pistols went off—and so Thompson was hundreds of miles away when two bombs detonated at the finish line yesterday, killing three and injuring scores more.

"I was with my daughter in the airport," Thompson, a mother of four, told Patch Tuesday morning. "So I didn't get to Boston in time, and didn't get my marathon number."

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Thompson estimates, based on her previous times, she would have crossed the finish line near the four-hour mark—around when the explosions rocked the crowd and a cluster of runners.

"I dodged a bullet," she said.

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Thompson's parents live in Boston, right along the iconic marathon route, and her father works as a physician at a major Boston Hospital. He was on-call yesterday when the attacks occurred.

"It was a bloodbath, he told me," Thompson said. "It was chaos. There were limbs everywhere. There were police with machine guns guarding the hospital."

Thompson's mother, 69, also experienced a stroke of kismet—she normally tackles the Boston run, too, but sat this year out on the heels of back surgery.

Still, Thompson has deep roots in the Massachusetts city, and said the hours after the attacks were trying.

"We didn't know where our friends were yesterday," she said. "It was really hard to find people."

Thompson's phone and email were abuzz with frantic missives as friends and family labored furiously to account for one another; one couple, acquaintances of Thompson's friend, both lost legs.

"I can't turn off the TV," Thompson added. "I keep thinking, 'this is me.'"

Thompson has run over 100 marathons, but says the Boston tragedy will likely nix her participation in the larger, illustrious races.

"I don't know if it's worth it—it's really scary," she said. "I have an incredibly busy life, and a lot of people who rely on me. I can't take chances."

Thompson also noted the idea of an attack on a marathon wasn't completely foreign. As a race veteran, she has had years to experience the entropy of these large-scale sporting events.

"Everytime I go to the starting line, I think, 'this is a set-up for a terrorist attack.'"

The clutter, the tens-of-thousands of runners and spectators, and the piles of unattended gym bags are overwhelming, Thompson said.

"I suspect that there will be a change to  [marathon] procedure, which will really be hard for the runners," she predicted. "It's going to be a huge deterrent. People will be scared to show up."


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