I survived the Boston Marathon bombing, and I’ll be back this year — even if I have to walk

By Johanna Hantel
In the fall of 1998, a friend talked me into running a marathon. Crazy, I thought. I had no running experience and no idea how to train. I ended up running the Philadelphia Marathon and was hooked. I ran a second marathon six months later and qualified for the Boston Marathon. I was running, against the advice of my doctor, on a right knee that had seven surgeries, the result of a skiing accident.
Knowing what a big deal it was to qualify for Boston, there was no way I was not