Walnut Creek Runner: Bombing 'Eclipsed' Marathon Emotions

It was "eclipsing all the emotions that got you to Boston," said Ray Abraham of Walnut Creek, to have the jubilation of preparing for the marathon finish Monday — "to be that close and see and hear a bomb go off."

When the bombs went off, the police were pulling Boston Marathon runners off Boylston Street and redirecting them a block away. Abraham borrowed a cellphone from someone in the street and called his wife Kristin at a Boston hotel to assure her he was all right.

Patch did a phone interview with Abraham, 60 — a veteran of 75 to 80 marathons and half-marathons — shortly after he and Kristin returned to Walnut Creek Tuesday afternoon to a sense of "phenomenal" relief.

Abraham has been reflecting for a day about being 3/10 of a mile from the bomb. "I'm extremely grateful I wasn't three minutes faster," Abraham told the mlive.com website in Michigan. "It's a pretty major tragedy." (Abraham has roots in East Grand Rapids, Mich., where he went to high school.)

"The course was every bit as packed with fans as the legend holds," said Abraham, who was running his first Boston marathon. "The scenery was beautiful. The weather was spectacular, just like today in Walnut Creek, only more clouds and a little cooler.

"That stretch of Boylston where you're headed toward the finish, maybe six-tenths of a mile from the finish, there are thousands of spectators. It's absolutely unbelievable, the roar. It's like everybody from AT&T Park is in your house, screaming and yelling for you.

"It's a wild, jubilant scene, and then it's eclipsing all the emotions that got you to Boston. I was 50 yards from the 26-mile mark. To be that close and see and hear a bomb go off and take all those emotions and flip them on their ear — it was relatively devastating."

After the bomb went off, Abraham saw dozens of emergency vehicles "streaming in" toward the finish line. He did a brisk 15-minute walk — good for the recovery of his exhausted legs — to the hotel. With the experience of many marathons, Kristin generally doesn't meet him in the normal chaos of the finish line, where cellphone calls often don't go through with overloaded networks.

"I didn't finish it and I'm OK with that, based on the fact that I'm here alive and able to talk about it," Abraham said.

Back at the hotel room, he spent hours calling, texting and emailing back friends and relatives assuring them he was all right. And making calls to catch a flight out of Boston the next morning, which turned out to be a 6 o'clock early bird

Abraham works as an investment adviser in Walnut Creek. He lives in the Mercer condo complex in downtown Walnut Creek, and does training runs on the Iron Horse Trail and the trails in Walnut Creek Open Space. He is also an avid cyclist. The Abrahams have lived in Walnut Creek since 1980.

The next marathon on the schedule is San Francisco on June 16.