A group of runners in Kalamazoo will honor victims of the Boston marathon bombing by running together tonight.
“Runners who were nowhere near Boston just feel like a piece of their heart has been ripped out,” said Tonya Durlach. She did not run the Boston marathon, but members of her E.P.I.C. running group and Kalamazoo Area Runners did.
“We’re trying to make sense of what happened but we can’t. We can’t understand why someone would do something so horrible. But the only thing we can do right now is think of them and pray for them,” Durlach said.
Durlach says no one in her group was injured during Monday’s bombings, but she says they’re all still pretty shaken up.
A fellow runner, Brett Beier, came up with the idea to host a solidarity run in support of those killed or injured in Boston. Durlach says runners are a tight knit group that “feels like family.”
“We spend a lot of time training together through grueling conditions. You spend hours sometimes with these people sharing the most intimate details of your life,” Duralch said.
Durlach says it’s a tough sport that takes a certain kind of person, with lots perseverance. She says runners are used to bouncing back.
“Because it’s not all fun you know? For every finish line that you cross, for every feeling of accomplishment that you have there’s hundreds and hundreds of hours that go into that,” she said.
The group will meet at 6p in Portage. More details are available on this event page.
