On the Way Home from Boston, Marathoners Attend Vigil for Victims

They came right off the train from Boston: Steve Milden, a 48-year-old veterinarian from Mullica Hill; his colleague, Dena Balsama, 39, of Swedesboro; and Joanne LoPresti, a 43-year-old mother of three, also from Mullica Hill.

Still wearing the yellow-and-blue windbreakers that marked them as runners in the 2013 marathon—and unwilling witnesses to the tragedy that had occurred there only a day earlier—they hadn't even been home yet to see their families.

But the trio, who have spent the past six months training for the world's best-known running event, took the Woodbury High School track Tuesday night to run a mile in silent vigil for those lost in the bombing.

They were joined by about 50 other runners in the event, which was hastily assembled by the Road Runners Club of Woodbury, yet very well attended.

Among those who joined the show of solidarity was West Deptford boys cross-country coach Mark Drummond.

Drummond, who has run the Boston marathon three times, said that the feeling of turning onto the homestretch of Boylston Street is "like nothing else you can describe.

"You've got thousands of people on both sides of the road, and that last turn, you still have a quarter-mile or so to go," Drummond said. Even runners who are "by no means at the front of the race" are cheered on as though they'd won it all.

To underscore just how difficult it is to even get to the Boston Marathon, Drummond said less than 10 percent of those who ever complete a marathon achieve a time that would allow them to qualify—and those standards are tightening up.

"For somebody to steal that from those people is a shame," Drummond said. "It's a life goal for some people. It was for me."

Milden knows that feeling of being cheated all too well. He was a half-mile from the finish line when he got a text message from his wife: "Call me now!"

"She goes, 'Where are you?'" Milden said. "I said, 'I'm running!' Then she tells me 'The race is over; the race has stopped.'"

Farther ahead, LoPresti and Balsama were already in the finishers' chute when the bombs detonated.

"We were far enough away that we didn't see it," Balsama said. "I didn't think too much of it. I was with two other women who said, 'That's not good,' and we left.

"We were maybe a block away," she said.

Milden pointed out that more then 400 New Jerseyans competed in the 2013 Boston Marathon, and Drummond remembered that "there was always a strong presence from the area; from Haddonfield, Moorestown, West Deptford."

Then there's the casualties of the attack: three dead, 183 injured, 13 of which lost limbs, according to CNN. The cruelty of runners and racing fans being robbed of their legs in such an incident is even more painful to observe, Drummond noted.

"What else was robbed from those people?" he said. "I don't know how you could quantify that in terms of the big picture. Some of those people might have been there for a purpose, and that purpose was stolen from them as well."

But Drummond also knows that the tragedy could have been far worse.

"When you get to the finish line, half a block from there is a huge medical tent," Drummond said.

"Thankfully all that medical staff was right there to save people."

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