FORT WALTON BEACH — When Paula Piazza took her place at the starting line of Monday’s Boston Marathon, she knew she wasn’t fully prepared. A series of injuries had interrupted the veteran marathon runner’s training.
“You get to go to Boston, you do it,” she said Tuesday outside the Run With It store downtown. “You do anything you have to do to get to the finish line.”
So she ran most of the course and walked more than she would have liked, crossing the finish line in 4 hours, 8 minutes. Less than a minute later, two explosions filled the area with smoke and flying debris.
“If the crowd hadn’t of been there (cheering) the way it was, I would have walked one more time or a couple more times,” said Piazza, who lives in Shalimar. “That would have put me in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Video clips show the first explosion knocking down an older runner in an orange tank top. Piazza saw the clip and recognized him as someone who ran near her for most of the race until she finally passed him.
She estimates that she was about 100 meters away when she heard the sound she first assumed was someone shooting a canon.
“I look back. I saw black, black smoke,” she said. “The guy next to me said, ‘I’m in the military. I know it was a bomb.’ ”
Piazza ran ahead, away from the explosions, and accepted her medal and blanket from confused volunteers. She didn’t immediately realize people were hurt.
“I was only thinking about getting out of danger,” she said. “You didn’t know what was coming next. Within a minute or two, thousands of sirens, FBI, newsmen running toward it.”
She found her friend and fellow runner, Michelle Underwood of Destin, at their prearranged spot.
Underwood had run a personal best, finishing more than 30 minutes before the explosions. She was several blocks away but heard the booms and saw the smoke.
“You couldn’t miss the sound,” she said. “It was deafening. Everybody looks over. Huge plume cloud and then another explosion.
“You finally understand maybe a building’s coming down, but what could you do? Your friend hasn’t crossed (the finish line) yet.”
By texting friends back home who were tracking the race online, she finally figured out Piazza had finished.
After finding each other, they went to a bar, which closed almost immediately. The women then went to their car, and at the urging of a firefighter got as far away as possible.
They flew back early Tuesday, dodging media at the airports.
Piazza struggled to talk about the experience and can’t bear to read stories or see photos from the scene.
“I couldn’t open the newspaper, couldn’t read it,” she said. “It’s like something so great has been turned into something horrific.”
She and Underwood went to Run With It’s regular training run Tuesday evening, where they were hugged and congratulated by friends and fellow runners.
“I have moments when I’m OK,” Piazza said as runners surrounded her in a quiet semi-circle.
“I just hope they find why? I don’t know if they ever will, but it would help to understand it.”