RUNNING BOSTON (1)

April 18. It’s 9.00 o’clock. I had breakfast a couple of hours ago and I’m preparing my training gear. I’ve gone up to the terrace and realized it was cold in spite of the shining sun. I’m looking for weather information on the internet: 49°F right now (it feels like 43°C). I decide to wear a short sport tights and a long sleeved T-shirt over the short one. Probably, the temperature will go up and I will be able to take it off when my body starts to warm up.

A new pair of sneakers was reserved for today. I bought them some time ago, but I waited for wearing them for first time in here. They are a red version of the Nike Skylon 11, a model which is great for my feet. They are like gloves for the feet. I don’t get blisters with this model and that it occurs often. I start running slowly. I have tendinitis on the inside part of the left knee that has been bothering me for over a month. Before traveling, I stopped running for almost three weeks. During this time, I’ve just been swimming in the pool. It seemed to have improved somewhat, but it is not completely healed as well as I expected. Yesterday, I didn't know if I should still rest the knee a little more or just start running. The way home from the airport following the river cleared my doubts: seeing so many people running, it costs to resist to train.

I'm leaving for the street to starting the warm-up: I'm jogging up and down for a few minutes through a small park and I switch my Garmin on. What a pleasure, after so many days, to go running again! Back Bay is the neighborhood where we stay in Boston thanks to our good Bostonian friends. It's quite old and has those garden streets with the emblematic red stone buildings, which are characterized by a bloc of stone stairs to reach the main gate from the street. Sometimes, the basement and the main floor are disposed in a half level in relation to the street. Many period films have been shot in places like this. I get to Huntington Avenue and I turn left. Then I must wait that the white figure that appears in the pedestrian traffic light. I follow the street looking for the intersection with Massachusetts Avenue, which takes me to the river. At the height of the huge church of the Christian Science Center ─nothing to do with the Tom Cruise's Church of Scientology─, I turn right. I run slowly, very comfortable with my new sneakers despite a slight discomfort in the left leg that does not stop me from running loose.

At each street intersection, from this point to Charles River, I'm finding two pairs of policemen, one on each side of the avenue. Suddenly, I remember I read this morning on the digital edition of The Boston Globe, that there is an interfaith religious service at 11.00 in memory of the victims of the Marathon bombing ─three people dead and over 170 injured─ at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. The service will be attended by the highest authorities of the city, the state and the nation, with President Obama at head. The presidential convoy will have to pass along the Massachusetts Avenue to get the cathedral from the airport.

Later, once at home, my wife and I will follow the discourse of religious leaders and civil authorities. Naturally, it's up to Barack Obama concluding. He doesn't disappoint. A speech full of strength and compassion at the same time; a speech thought to be optimistic about the future despite being hurt by the circumstances. "You will run again," he says. "We will finish the race," he insists. A few minutes before the end, he manages to take the audience to climax. After the applause and shouts of enthusiastic support from the public, he changes to being intimate and respectful to the victims and their relatives. He controls the tempo and finishes gently and compassionately. His feeling of empathy with those affected, his clarity of ideas, his strength of spirit and his determination in the communicate action make me feel a great envy of this country. When have we heard something similar to the Spanish political leaders? I'm afraid never.

I cross Boylston Street, the street that annually hosts the finish of the Boston Marathon. I cannot help thinking that now for three days, more than twenty thousand pairs of sneakers ran over there, and some didn't get to walk on the word FINISH, painted on the floor at the arrival line, because of the blasts. The target of the terrorists was located near where I am now, at the height of the Boston Public Library, “FOUNDED TROUGH MUNIFICENCE AND THE SPIRIT OF PUBLIC CITIZENS,” according to the inscription beneath the eaves of the southern facade of the magnificent building which houses the library. I experienced envy again. “THE PUBLIC LIBRARY OF THE CITY OF BOSTON BUILT BY THE PEOPLE AND DEDICATED TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, AD MVCCCLXXXVIII,” says on the main facade that looks at Copley Square ─a military camp since the attack. The exclusion zone reaches one or two streets round the perimeter of the library.

The postulated “THE COMMONWEALTH REQUIRES THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE AS THE SAFEGUARD OF ORDER AND LIBERTY” dominates the north wall, just over the finish of the race. Two guys deposited the rucksacks with pressure cookers inside ─it seems that they were manufactured in Spain; what a pity. The cook pots contained explosives and shrapnel, and they were left on the street a few meters from the arrival, in the midst of the crowd. One of them looked at the eyes of a concrete person, and he was be able to keep his head cool. If they had looked up, they would have been able to read the message engraved on the stone. Perhaps they couldn’t understand the meaning of those words, but I wish they had looked up. Hatred and bigotry blind the minds of these individuals, and their hearts are hardened against any emotion of goodness. It is ironic that one library ─one of the greatest symbols of human civilization─ has been witness to a terrorist act ─one of the greatest human atrocities. Sports, in particular the marathon, also exemplifies an essential aspect of civilization. The Boston Marathon is the oldest popular marathon in the world (1897). I don't know if it was also the reason it was a target, but clearly it is an attractive place because it concentrates tens of thousands of people in an open space. A race that runs on public roads and hasn't doors, which prevents establish checkpoints.

I'm leaving Boylston St. and I'm approaching the Harvard Bridge. I love running across this bridge. The Charles River is under me, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is in front, just on the other side of the river, in Cambridge. Beacon Hill on the right and the golden dome of the State House ─seat of government of the state of Massachusetts─ reflects the sunshine from the top. As background, there is the skyline of the Financial District. It’s blowing a cold breeze from the sea and I’m not training comfortably. If only I wore more clothes! After the 6-hundred-metre bridge (656 yd), I'm reaching MIT, a world leading university in technology. The Harvard University, which is the oldest university in the States (1636) and one of the most famous in the world, is located two miles and a half from here. Obama is one of hundreds of illustrious alumni that have studied there. I'm thinking about the solemn speech in the cathedral that he is going to pronounce into an hour: "I've lived here for a long time," he'll say. "Therefore Boston is my home." "For thousands of us, it has been something personal," he'll state, referring to the attack.

I am thinking, “If my leg goes well, I will run to Harvard Yard in the coming days. But I am going to go along the river, because the way is longer and more beautiful and healthier than jogging along the Mass. Av. traffic jam.” After leaving MIT, I couldn't imagine that a shootout would begin in its streets twelve hours afterwards, and would murdered a police officer, and would lose his life one of the bombing suspects. It seems now likely that the two terrorists are brothers and come from Chechnya (now it's known that they had lived in the neighboring Republic of Dagestan). Alarms are triggered: the hypothesis of Islamist terrorism regains prominence. Chechnya, in the Russian Caucasus, is a tinderbox, and it has been one of the preferred regions for Al-Qaeda to recruit fanatics. We'll see how it all ends. Boston is going to be restricted today. Curfew: authorities have asked people to stay home. So the streets will be empty, the schools closed, there won't be public transportation, nobody will be able to enter or leave the city by bus, train or plane. Now I don't know yet, but tomorrow we won't go to the  Tribeca Film Festival of New York as we had planned as a result of what is going to happen tonight just some meters from where I am now. What a strange, the course of events! We'll have to leave the journey for the next week. If this nuisance helps to catch the other criminals, it'll be a minor cost to pay two taxi races in vane tomorrow.

I am crossing the river again, this time through the Longfellow Bridge, and I'm going to The Esplanade. This park on the right side of the Charles is very nice and there are always dozens of runners who go upstream or downstream. And helicopter remains static in the air over a point in the southwest. It must be near the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, where the religious service is about to begin. I've run almost seven kilometers and I feel good. I've increased the pace a bit and I'm already in short sleeves; this is a good sign. I can still feel a slight pain in the left leg, but it might also be because of the muscle stiffness after our long trip. I'm beating the jet lag as well. Muscles and joints get stuck, and it takes a couple of days to wake them up. And the brain takes even more time.

I'm going up the ramp of the Harvard Bridge and I'm turning left in the Massachusetts Avenue to do the last two kilometers to home. I’ve run a bit over 5,5 miles in 45 minutes. Not bad, being the first time after many days of rest. After a futile trip by taxi that we'll make at a quarter to seven in the morning, during which we'll see more police patrol and secret service cars than citizens, we are going to spend the full day glued to the TV and internet to see how the manhunt for the second suspect develops. Hopefully, he will soon be captured to do justice and restore normality. When they declare the state of emergency anywhere, the life of ordinary people is altered. Boston is a community particularly quiet and civilized, one of those cities where people, perhaps more than elsewhere, are longing to recover the lost peace and calm .

"We'll run and finish the race." So be it.