I was half a mile from the finish when the Boston Marathon bomb exploded

Class of ’15 graduate Todd Lubin was half a mile from the finish line when the first Boston Marathon bomb exploded.

Todd, who was a sophomore and Computer Science concentrator at the time, was expecting to see his family at the finish.

We spoke to Todd on the third anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing to remember that day – and how he’s now running again.

Todd running in 2013

Where were you in the race when the bomb exploded?

I was stopped just short, just below where the course goes under the Mass Ave Bridge. It was just a crowd of runners and they stopped us all, and didn’t really tell us what was happening. It was about mile 25 and a half-ish.

So you were near the end?

I had been training for a while, I kind of injured myself. I was going to run through the injury anyway. I was going much slower than planned. Basically my injury flared up at the end of the race and I was going pretty slow, I was going to come in at about four hours and 20/30 minutes. My parents and grandparents and brother and were going to meet me at the finish line.

You had family there? That must have been scary.

Yeah. I had family at the finish. Coming up to the finish, mile 25, it had been a long race with a lot of pain, I was ready to be done. And in front of me I see a crowd of runners. My first thought was that someone fainted and was getting medical help or something, but as I got closer I could see it was thousands of runners just stopped in place. When I got there I inquired, what’s going on, what’s going on. That’s what everybody was doing.

Nobody had any idea what was happening. Just that they had stopped us because something had happened at the finish line. Word spread that maybe it was a bomb. Then emergency vehicles were flying by us. Some people were hysterical: hysterically crying, saying “we have family at the finish”, phones weren’t really going through, so I couldn’t really get in touch with anyone. Finally after 10 or 15 minutes one of my phone calls went through and I found out my family was all OK.

And then we knew we weren’t going to finish the race. I actually kind of made friends with someone throughout the race, we both had been cramping, and motivated each other throughout. We had seen each other when we got stopped. He couldn’t get in touch with his family so I told him to come back with me to Harvard, my family was there, we’d get dinner, we’d drive him home, because he lived close by. We hitchhiked a ride back to Harvard, met up with my family, went out for dinner. Settled down from the crazy afternoon.

In the 2014 marathon

How did people react when you knew it was an attack? 

Most people were hysterical. It was whether or not they showed it or kept it inside. I kept it in fairly well, because I tend to be very rational. I knew there was nothing I could do. But it’s kind of about the “what if”. It’s totally out of your control. A lot of people had these images of losing family members. It was a very real feeling in that moment.

Finishing in 2014

Has it affected you since?

I still run a lot. I love running – I ran Boston the year after. I’m going to be running New York in 2017. I still get the chills when I watch the Boston Marathon. It feels very close to me. I feel like even if this didn’t happen, it would still be a big part of me, because it was the first two marathons that I ran. I ran in 2013 and finished at 25 miles and a half, and again in 2014. I actually delayed this interview because I wanted to watch the end [today]. It makes me really happy to see everyone cheering down Boylston and the runners finishing, seeing happiness on this day instead of hysterical craziness.

Everyone was expecting it to be such a happy day.

I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to say the only way it affected me was that I had to run the next year. I couldn’t finish it that year. Really just incredible fortunate.