For Southeast Missouri State University alumnus Greg Soutiea, getting up and running is something he is used to. But on the morning of April 16, Soutiea put on his running shoes and ran the streets of Boston. He did not run because he needed to train for a race but to honor those affected by the Boston Marathon bombing and simply because he did not know what else to do.
A native of Pevely, Mo., Soutiea began his racing career by running in the Freedom of Speech 5K in Cape Girardeau. He graduated from Southeast in 2007 with a marketing management degree and ended up in Boston.
He runs about 80 miles a week and has spent more than eight years competing in triathlons. Soutiea started the morning of April 15 just like he had the past two years.
Soutiea traveled on a bus some 26 miles outside of the city early that morning to compete in the Boston Marathon. He was in the first wave and third corral, which is a sectioned area where runners are grouped together according to their expected finish time.
"I just relaxed and waited for the race to start," Soutiea said.
Soutiea paced himself during the race as he ran into the wind the whole time. The race is notorious for its hills, but he was pretty familiar with the course since he had trained on it before.
Soutiea finished the 26.2 mile race in 2 hours, 54 minutes, 24 seconds with an average time of 6:39 per mile.
"The second half of the race was faster than the first half," Soutiea said.
When he neared the finish line he said everyone in the crowd was cheering and yelling the runners' names and that he almost fell over once he actually crossed the finish line.
Soutiea then went to shower and meet up with his brother and roommate. As they crossed over Boylston Street from the Plaza Park Hotel to head over to a bar to meet some friends, they heard a sound echo the streets.
"It sounded like a big firework boom," Soutiea said.
But after being a participant in the marathon for the past two years, Soutiea knew that fireworks were not part of the event.
"I knew it was a bomb," Soutiea said.
Soutiea and his friends looked around in confusion. They checked Twitter to see if anything had been tweeted about what they just heard. He then jumped up on a barricade to look down the street.
Boom.
Soutiea saw the second bomb go off less than a minute apart from the first one. Soon people started coming toward Soutiea and his friends.
"A guy was on his cell phone and his legs were bloody, but he didn't want to talk about it," Soutiea said.
They headed toward the site of the bombing to find runners they knew. Along the way they helped others by letting them use their phone since many runners did not have their phones on them during the race. They helped an Australian man by lending him their phone so he could text his wife to let her know that he was OK.
After about 30 minutes the police told everyone to go home. Soutiea and his friends hopped on a city bus that was shuttling people out of the city.
Later, Soutiea found out that everyone he knew was safe and had not been hurt, but some of his close friends lost friends during the bombing, including 8-year-old Martin Richard, whom one of his friends coached.
Four days after the marathon, one of the suspects involved in the bombing was caught about a mile away from Soutiea's house when the city was in lockdown. Soutiea and his brother were out of town that day.
"It doesn't feel any less safe," Soutiea said. "I'm angry, not scared. They've accomplished their goal, they win [if we are scared]."
Soutiea plans to run in the next Boston Marathon "without any hesitation."
