Thousands responded when former Olympian Jeff Galloway put out the call to runners across the country to show solidarity after last week’s Boston Marathon bombing, including about 50 in Durango.
“We’re running for those who were injured and lost their lives in Boston last week,” said Jigger Staby said to the group that gathered at Rotary Park. “Runs organized by more than 1,100 running stores across the country are starting at 6:30 p.m. in their time zones, and the memorial service for the young Chinese student who was killed is happening right now, so we’re running for her, too.”
Ilan Paltrow, who moved to Durango about six months ago, was running for more than solidarity, he was running for friends who were injured in the bombings. Nicole and Michael Gross, along with her sister, Erika Bannock, had traveled to Boston to cheer on the women’s mother, Carol Downing, who was running.
Bannock lost her left leg below the knee, and Nicole Gross suffered multiple injuries, including a broken leg, broken ankle and torn Achilles tendon. Michael Gross is healing from cuts and burns.
“They’re going to be all right, but they have a long road ahead,” Paltrow said.
Nicole Gross was the stunned woman featured in a photograph seen around the world, including on the front pages of the New York Daily News and her hometown paper, the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina.
Also among the locals running were four former Boston Marathon participants, Ken (1995, 1997) and Karen Skelly (1997), David Rakita (1979) and Durango Herald editor and columnist John Peel (2004). All had great memories of the experience and the spectators.
“You could hear the crowd near Wellesley College from half a mile away,” Karen Skelly said, saying she felt shocked and sad after the news broke. “It just kept getting louder and louder as you approached.”
Ken Skelly, who competed in his first “Boston,” after ending up in the hospital with food poisoning three days earlier, learned that being from Colorado has its advantages.
“I kept wondering, where’s this Heartbreak Hill they keep talking about?” he said. “Then somebody said, ‘You already ran it.’”
All were surprised that the bombing happened during a running event.
“You hear about security fears in sports with controlled environments like football and baseball, but not in something wide open like running,” Ken Skelly said. “We just heard from the folks at the Bolder Boulder, where 50,000 people run on Memorial Day, that there will extra security this year. But that’s not going to stop us from going to run it.”
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