We got home late yesterday afternoon, and I don't think I've ever needed a run so much in my life as I did today.

I did 7.6 today - longest I've ever run this soon after a marathon - at nearly the pace I raced at, in weather 25° hotter and much more humid, which if I needed any more proof I didn't give it everything on Monday, there it is. Racing too conservatively is a perennial problem of mine, and the fact that my training had been so conservative really contributed to that. I think I'm still haunted more than I realize by the memory of blowing up in a mile race as an anorexic 12-year-old, having refused the pre-race lunch the rest of the team ate.

But. If I'd laid everything I had on the line on Monday, it might have been *literally* everything. I might have been right there. And DH ... some guardian angel was watching him. You were right, he *should* have been at the finish line waiting for me, and if the bombing hadn't happened, I'd be giving him holy h#ll for having gone straight to the family meeting area instead. As it was, that's where he was, well out of danger and out of view. (And I did get to see him cheering me on in Wellesley, in a more innocent time. )

I did wear the jacket this weekend. Partly as an invitation to exchange sympathy with anyone who felt moved to give or receive it - including the Boston-based flight attendant on the last leg of my trip yesterday, and the man who came up to me in a restaurant in Austin to tell me, in a heavy German accent, that as a fellow runner, he too had been touched by what happened. And I wore it as a message to random strangers that my tolerance for mean behavior, rudeness, or general BS towards me or anyone else was exactly zero.

+1 on the pictures of the medal hand-out. The BAA has been amazing through all of this. I'm getting emails and Facebook posts every day on topics as wide ranging as how to pick up gear bags (I didn't check any), when final results will be released, and resources for dealing with PTSD. I'm so impressed with them and with the whole town of Boston.