A Boca Raton doctor who ran in the Boston Marathon is grateful that he and his running partners made some short stops along the course.
Dr. Nathan Nachlas was about a half-mile away from the finish line when two bombs went off near the marathon’s finish Monday. He said he thinks he may have avoided the blasts because his wife and a friend stopped at various “nice moments” during the race.
"We stopped at Wellesley to take pictures with the students, and we stopped, we saw this very amazing runner who has a child with cerebral palsy, and for the last two to three decades he has run every marathon with this child, pushing the child in a wheelchair,” Nachlas said.
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His group also paused at 21 miles to take pictures with their son.
"And when we add up all the time that we stopped, if we hadn't, then that's pretty much when everything was happening at the finish line,” Nachlas said.
The bombings killed three people and injured more than 170. The FBI released photos and videos of two suspects in the case Thursday, asking the public to help identify them.
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After the blasts, Nachlas said, "I got a call from my daughter and I couldn't really hear her because I had my phone with me with an ear bud, but the crowd was very loud.”
She was at the finish line trying to explain to him what had just happened. All Nachlas heard was that they were headed back to the hotel, which he said sounded a little strange.
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He and his wife ran to the police for answers, and were told that there was an explosion and that they should continue running.
"My wife, who I was running with along with a friend of ours, started panicking that something had happened to my daughter," Nachlas recalled.
They reunited with her at the hotel three hours later. Along the way, different people gave Nachlas and his wife clothes to keep warm, fed them chips, and let them into their homes for shelter and to use Facebook to get in contact with loved ones.
When they finally reached the hotel, they initially said they were done with marathons for good – but to honor the victims, they have changed their minds.
"So planning on hopefully, maybe, doing it next year,” Nachlas said.
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