Safety Harbor Runner at Boston Marathon: 'I Was Stunned'

Safety Harbor's John Robida has competed in more than 20 marathons worldwide in his lifetime.

Monday's Boston Marathon was unlike any of them.

Although he finished the race — his 11th time running the Boston event — well before the deadly attacks took place, Robida said the atmosphere in and around the city was chaotic in the aftermath.

"I finished in three hours and eighteen-plus minutes, so I was through the finish line about an hour and a half before the bombing happened," he said following a run Wednesday with a group from the Safety Harbor Athletic Club.

"I went out to dinner with my dad afterwards, and when I got back to the hotel, I got a call about what happened, and I was like, 'Holy'... I was stunned."

Robida described how it felt as members of his group and other runners frantically tried to locate each other and learn more about what happened.

"It was more confusion than panic," he said. "Everybody was just trying to make sure everyone else was OK."

"A friend of mine was staying at the Lenox Hotel right next to the blast, and she asked if I might be able to come get her, but it turned out she didn't need me to."

Robida also spoke about the kind of dedication and determination that can make a runner continue to strive for the finish line even as disaster unfolds all around them.

"You get tunnel vision. Your goal is the finish line, and you're conditioned to go for it."

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Robida's fellow running club members said those qualities explain how runners could continue to race despite the tragedy that unfolded in Boston.

"The runners were completing a 16-week stretch preparing to compete in that event," Palm Harbor resident Ken Kunsman said. "When you see that clock at the finish line, your goal is to finish that race. The complete focus is there."

Kunsman said he was impressed by the first responders who rushed into the smoke to help the victims immediately after the blast.

A seasoned runner who ran the Boston Marathon in 2001 and is heading to London to compete in that race next week, Kunsman said he refuses to be cowed despite the Boston attack that left three dead and hundreds wounded.

"My family asked me to please not go (to London)," he said. ""But my thought is, it's our world and the idiots can't have it. There's more of 'us' than there are of 'them.' "

Fred Rzymek, the group's organizer who ran in the 100th Boston marathon in 1997, said he was disheartened to see someone attempt to destroy such a historic event.

"To do something like that, somebody wanted to make a statement, and they did," he said.

But he, too, understands how the will to compete can supersede the need to be safe.

"I feel bad for the runners who ran halfway and then had to stop," Rzymek said. "A marathoner is programmed to run 26.2 (miles). To have to stop before that is very difficult."

As for Robida, despite being so close to such a tragic event, he was unequivocal about whether he will ever compete in the Boston race again.

"Definitely. That won't be my last Boston Marathon," he said. "I'll be back again."