Bombing Didn't Keep Malvern Woman From Running In Boston Marathon: Report

It was a terrifying day when bombs went off at the Boston Marathon in 2013. With thousands and thousands of runners from all over the world, family and friends were frantically checking to see if their loved ones were caught in the blast.

One Main Line woman had been running the race for 13 years and was crossing the finish line as the bombs went off.

That woman is Johanna Hantel of Malvern, who recently finished the 2017 Boston Marathon in 7:19:37, coming in 26,409th overall.

She wrote on Yahoo.com about her experiences coping with the bombing on ahead of Monday's Boston Marathon.

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"On April 15, 2013, I was running my 13th Boston Marathon. I was running on the far left side of Boylston Street and I was just about at the finish line when a bomb exploded," she writes on the website. "I was about 10 feet away from the explosion, which knocked me off my feet. I do not remember anything about the explosion except seeing an orange glow. I did not hear it or the second explosion that quickly followed."

After suffering a ruptured eardrum and hearing loss, shrapnel wounds, broken fingers, a misaligned jaw and a blast-induced brain injury, the now 57 year old Hantel was not going to give up in the face of terrorism.

She returned to the race in 2014. And 2015. And 2016. And now has the 2017 Boston Marathon under her belt, making Monday's run her 17th running of the historic race.

"In 2015, I faced one of the bombers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, in court before he was sentenced to death. I was one of the victims allowed to testify," she tells Yahoo.com "'If I have to crawl,' I told him, 'I am going to continue to run Boston each year … because I will not let this sickening act take that away from me.'"

You can read Hantel's full story on Yahoo.com here.

Image via Rebecca Hildreth, Flickr Commons