A Kiss at Mile 6, Horror at the Finish Line, Hope in the Aftermath

“It was going to be a picture-perfect marathon,” Alexis Avila remembers.

But then, of course, it wasn’t.

Avila, a Wayland resident, recalls that Monday had all the makings of a perfect Boston Marathon day. There was a nice breeze, the temperature wasn’t oppressive like it was for his first Boston Marathon in 2012, and he was bursting with confidence.

“Optimistic,” Avila says he was feeling. “Perfect running weather. Nice breeze. 60 degrees,” he continues. “Extremely confident that I was going to finish.”

Avila began his run in Hopkinton and spent the first few miles besting his pace and pulsing with adrenaline. And then came another boost at mile six in Framingham.

There, along the side of the route, Avila’s wife, Sandy; his sister-in-law; his goddaughter; and other members of his family surprised him.

They were supposed to be waiting for him at the finish line.

“I was feeling awesome,” Avila recalls. “I was breaking my record time. I was going nine-minute miles at that point when I should have been going ten-and-a-half. I was feeling amazing. Very energized, adrenaline rushed.”

A high-five from his 2-year-old goddaughter only improved his mood. And a kiss from his wife, while his sister-in-law snapped a photo, lifted his spirits even higher.

Then he took off down the remaining marathon course … and his family headed to the finish line.

Confusion Sets In

Avila keeps his race pace in check with the music on his cell phone, but he knows the battery gives out at mile 24 near Coolidge Corner. On Monday, Avila made it only another mile after his cell phone died before the race came to an abrupt halt.

“I ran to mile 25 and then, basically on Commonwealth Avenue at about mile 25.2, there was a huge crowd of runners that were just walking around in different directions,” Avila recounts. “They didn’t look like they were running anymore.”

But Avila had trained for four months for this race, and he believes in his cause: Big Brothers, Big Sisters. His “little brother,” now a 21-year-old man, was waiting for him at the finish line along with the rest of Avila’s family.

So Avila tried to keep running in spite of the “dazed and confused” look on other runners’ faces. But his efforts proved futile as it became impossible to dodge the other participants who had stopped participating.

Other runners, Avila recalls, began to tell him that police officers were stopping the race – there was no point in continuing to plunge toward the finish line.

But why?

There was no official announcement, no loudspeaker that spread the devastating news.

“It was really word-of-mouth from one runner or one spectator to the next,” Avila says. “At first we didn’t know anything about a bomb, just that [the marathon] was canceled.”

At last, the son of one of Avila’s teammates pulled up a CNN story on his cell phone, and then Avila knew that he had to reach his family.

His own cell phone was dead, however, and cell phone service was sketchy at best, he says.

For the next several minutes, Avila searched for someone who would let him use their cell phone – but everyone with a working cell phone had their own family and friends to contact.

“It didn’t sink in. I was optimistic that they were alive,” Avila says of that time between discovering there had been a bombing and hearing his wife’s voice on the other end of a stranger’s cell phone. “We heard that there were three casualties. Obviously, I wasn’t sure, but my wife was on the bleachers and if the bomb had been on the bleachers, there would have been hundreds and hundreds of casualties.

“I didn’t think that anyone was going to be hurt from my family,” Avila says. “I just kept my composure. I just wanted to get a hold of someone immediately, and that’s what I did.”

Avila’s wife, Sandy, had a VIP pass allowing her access to the bleachers at the finish line. She sat, Avila found out later, next to Mayor Thomas Menino’s family. His parents were stationed next to the bleachers on the street near the finish line and his “little brother,” Danny, was waiting just beyond the finish line.

Avila’s phone call eventually went through to his mom, who put his wife on the phone and assured him that his family and loved ones were OK.

“It was the biggest sigh of relief just to hear her voice,” Avila says. “We just broke down.”

Avila says he decided he needed to take care of himself once he realized his family was safe and coming to get him at 400 Commonwealth Ave. He says other runners were “in bad shape,” with cramps and shivering after having run 25 miles.

He wandered into the lobby of an “opulent” condo building where a couple of “college boys” who were in the lobby drinking Budweisers jumped in to help him.

“They gave me food and water, they even offered me a beer,” Avila says. “They wrapped me in a big blanket. They were Bostonians through and through.”

He said they told him, “That’s what we do in Boston. We’re all brothers.”

And that sentiment, that helping hand, is what Avila is choosing to take away from this experience at the Boston Marathon – that and the memory of that kiss he shared with his wife at mile six.

“I’m going to remember most that picture, to be honest,” Avila says. “It’s etched into my mind forever. It’s a picture of me kissing my wife, who I love, in one of the happiest moments of the day. What I’m going to take away is the fact that there are good memories from that day.”

Avila knows there are people in the world who would taint what is supposed to be a celebratory day, but there are also opportunities to rise above the actions of those “bad apples.”

“We live in a scary world where something bad like this can happen at any moment, but it’s important to hold on to what is important in your life and enjoy the moment. It’s imperative that we worry about today and what’s in front of us,” Avila explains. “We’re all in this together. I honestly have faith in people again, believe it or not. There are bad apples, there are terrorists that need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But the people in the aftermath … there is so much good, there’s community.

“I feel sad coming out of this, but I’m strong, too.”