Principal 'Finishes' Boston Marathon in Troy

Dr. Pam Mathers' dream of finishing the Boston Marathon was cut short Monday when she was stopped a half mile from the end of the race because of deadly bomb blasts near the finish line.

Like many other Metro Detroit runners, she was left without the celebration of crossing the tape and receiving the coveted medal.

However, Wednesday morning at Troy Hamilton Elementary School, students, faculty, and administration recreated the spectacle to cheer their principal to the finish.

They lined the library and clapped and hooted as she crossed through the makeshift 2013 Boston Marathon tape. She was then handed a bouquet of pink roses and a finisher's medal as she beamed.

"My hope was to come back and have it be a teachable moment, saying that if you work hard, you can achieve your goals — as a runner, you just want to finish the race," said Mathers. "To come back and have this teachable moment is the ultimate, it's the best thing."

After a full eight months of training — including waking up at 4:30 a.m. in order to run on treadmills at the Troy Community Center before starting work at 7:30 a.m. — Mathers was only a half-mile from the finish line when she "hit a wall."

"I was 25.79 miles into it," said Mathers, 62, of Bloomfield Hills. "Then people were slowing down and I was trying to push through them, thinking, 'What the heck? I've got to finish this race.' Then, I hit a wall of runners."

At this point of uncertainty and fear, Mathers said, fellow runners began talking about danger ahead. She said rumors began to spread of explosions at either the subway, the Boston Lenox Hotel, or the finish line. She made contact with her friends waiting near the hotel, with help from the green Michigan State University ball cap she wore through the race, and pieced together where she was.

"There was a stretch of hills where I purposefully slowed down to walk and that probably put me 1-2 minutes behind — there were about five miles after that where I began to ran again. I think that if I hadn't slowed down, I might have finished the race or been near the finish line when the explosions occurred, so I was just thanking God to be in the right place at the right time," she said.

Mathers, who started running in 2006 but had never competed in Boston before, said that she would not let the experience deter her from running again.

"Tears were in my eyes, just looking at the tragedy of what happened and thinking, my gosh. That beautiful day, for so many people, it’s so tragic," she said. "I’ll always remember my experience."