"Like an Explosion, Like a Bomb, Like an Artillery Cannon"

The first bomb blast occurred at 2:50 p.m. at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the second, seconds later.

Rye resident Vickie Cox had crossed the line almost three minutes before. She had taken just over four hours to run the famous 26.2 mile race.

"It made everybody jump and turn," Cox said from her hotel room in Cambridge. "The second bomb went off, and then everyone began to move. It's not an easy thing to do when you've just run 26 miles to start running again."

Cox said she heard rather than felt it. "It was very, very loud. It sounded like an explosion, like a bomb, like an artillery cannon or something."

Smoke filled the area, and her heart went out to the runners who were just finishing. "My first thought was those poor people coming across the line," she said. "It's a very emotional thing, to run a marathon--and these poor people coming across the line were not going to be able to speak or breathe."

Her biggest worry was her husband, who had been on the other side of the finish line as a spectator to watch her go by.

"There was someone waiting at the baggage bus--that's how they bring all your stuff to the finish line. I was able to get my cell phone and send a text message and he was fine," she said.

They joined streams of people crossing the Massachusetts Avenue bridge when the third explosion occurred--"which also terrified us," she said. It was the police defusing a third device.

"It was very frightening."

This was Cox's 11th marathon. She had planned for it to be her last, because it was a difficult run for her last year--but she ran it for her mother, who died two years ago, and her sister who died last year.

"I feel like they carried me those last six miles," she said. "If I had been two minutes slower..."

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