By RORY MASTERSON

EDITORIAL MANAGER

“Our sport is your sport’s punishment.” So goes a popular slogan that appears on the backs of many high school track and cross country T-shirts. Like other athletes, runners have to train consistently in preparation for whatever their goals are. The more ambitious of this group work up to the arduous task of the marathon, a 26.2-mile test of strength, endurance and will which pushes people to the absolute, finite brink of their physicality.

On Monday afternoon, a little over four hours after the start of the 117th Boston Marathon, two bombs exploded within seconds of each other near the finish line on Boylston Street, killing three people and injuring dozens more. The video is shocking and difficult to watch, eliciting a kind of transcendent, viral horror that, to a lesser extent, manifested itself in the Kevin Ware injury video during the NCAA Tournament.

The runners affected were finishing a full two hours after Ethiopia’s Lelisa Desisa had already won the race; thus, most of those around the explosions at this point were presumably not professional runners, but rather people who had trained in spare time and perhaps taken a day off from work to challenge themselves in the athletic realm.

This is a tragic act of horrific violence carried out by as-yet-undetermined assailants against innocent people. To attack this particular group of unarmed people is particularly heinous and could only be the work of extreme cowardice, and the images from Monday afternoon evoke emotions akin to those following the London Underground bombings of 2005 or of the September 11 attacks.

What we can find solace in is the fact that so many people were quick to volunteer in a time of need. Some runners finished the race and continued on to the Massachusetts General Hospital to donate blood. Off-duty police officers responded to the bombings and provided assistance. Boston.com even set up a Google document full of volunteers who would house people who needed a place to stay if they could not leave the city or were otherwise displaced. These are the little beacons of hope, the shreds of light which poke through overwhelming, suffocating darkness and give us reason to think that this world is not as bleak as an act like this makes it seem.

As with any tragedy, there will be a period of mourning during which an outpouring of emotions will attempt to console those affected in any way by the bombings. Support will come from all corners of the globe, providing comfort in the face of great pain, and, hopefully, the anger of the senselessness involved in this act will subside as those responsible are brought to justice.

Once time starts to heal these wounds, the question will be how to rebound. With any luck and a lot of communal spirit, the people of Boston and the marathon itself will return for its 118th edition stronger than ever.

Rory Masteron, GSB ‘14, is a business administration major from Fort Mill, SC.