Westford Academy Student Gets Special Finish to the Boston Marathon

Finishing a marathon is a special accomplishment regardless of the circumstances, but Westford Academy student Katie Ernst got a particularly special end after the harrowing experiences she faced during first Boston Marathon last week.

Ernst was only 100 yards away from the finish line when the first blast went off last Monday, but although she wasn’t able to get across the line on Boylston Street, her friends made a finish line for her to cross on Westford Common the next day.

While her muscles were sore from running 26 miles, the cold temperatures and the traumatic conditions in Boston a day earlier, getting across the finish line in Westford was a memory she will never forget.

“I was really limping, but I made it through. I was so angry I didn’t get to finish, but getting to finish with such great friends made things better,” she said. “I’m glad that everyone was okay, and this experience really was a great reminder of such great friends I have.”

Many of those friends, primarily fellow Westford Academy students, were there with her near the finish line when she says she was literally pushed back by the impact of the first blast on Monday.

Ernst began to run in the opposite direction, but ran back toward the finish line and away from another blast, stopping before eventually heading onto a side street and past several blown off limbs and random bloody bodies.

She attempted to call her father Jeff, who had been running with her from the 12^th mile until near the end of the course, where she began to pull away.

Jeff told her daughter to meet up at the Marriott, but Katie ultimately ended up at an entirely different Marriott in the area where she received a partial post-race massage for runners until police told her and other occupants of the second Marriott to evacuate.

“I walked another four miles trying to get out of Boston. I sat down after the second blast and I thought my friends had blown up,” she said. “After running 26 miles and being freezing, I couldn’t move at all.”

The fact she was able to enter the race at all was an accomplishment in itself after an injury she suffered during the Westford Academy girls’ basketball season, which required her to train on an elliptical machine.

Ernst said she’s not likely to enter the Boston Marathon next year due to enrollment in the University of South Carolina, but she hopes to duplicate the feeling she had crossing the finish line with her friends as well as helping to raise $5,000 for the Dana Farber Marathon Challenge.

“I’ll definitely run again,” she said.