He's known simply as Coach Don. First he was a legendary swim coach at Tufts University, now Don Megerle helps Tufts students and alumni compete in the Boston Marathon. Inspiration comes at all hours. Take last year, when, on the night before the marathon, Megerle says he was up until 2 a.m. making every runner on his team a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“At the team dinner I made the mistake of asking this group of over 500 people, ‘Do any of the runners want a peanut butter and jelly sandwich handy or ready at mile 9 as they run by?’" he said. "A hundred people raised their hands and I go, 'Oh my god, I wasn’t ready for this.'"
Many on the team didn’t notice his sandwiches at mile 9 and raced on by. Megerle didn’t mind. He says he was looking forward to seeing his runners at the finish line because, “When they finish the marathon, the first five to 15 seconds of their life, something happens to them that they need to express it, feel it, sense it, experience it, and I’m with them at that moment and that’s off the charts. That’s a feeling that I live for.”
A feeling he lives for, but one that didn’t last long at last year’s marathon.
“I think we greeted about 40 runners," he said. "The kids that were running did very, very well. We had a lot of bandits that ran last year that finished before the bombs went off and then everything of course changed. I’m normally in control of my feelings, but when I start talking about it, I start to cry and I can’t stop it."
Corinne Glennie was one of the bandits that Coach Don greeted at the finish line last year. She was an unofficial runner with the team and competing in her very first marathon. After a grueling 26.2 miles, she crossed the finish line just 180 seconds before the first bomb exploded.
“We crossed the finish line at 2:47 and they went off at 2:50," she said. "So we had just crossed the finish line and we gave Don a hug. We were just congratulating each other and I still didn’t know where my parents were when I heard the bomb go off.”
"At first I thought it was the Minutemen, and I was like, 'Why are the Minutemen going off, firing off their guns right now?' and then I turned and we saw the smoke and then we realized it was pretty serious.”
Glennie says her experience at last year’s Boston Marathon was terrifying, but she has decided to run the marathon again.
"I knew that if I didn’t run because of being afraid, then they would have won," she said. "I mean, that’s the whole idea of terrorism, right? So, I knew that I wanted to get out there and run and show I don’t know who, but show somebody that I wasn’t afraid and nobody should be afraid and we should keep doing the race.”
Kerry Eaton didn't run last year’s race.
"I was right on Boylston Street," she said. "I was about 10 feet from where the second bomb went off.”
'I'm normally in control of my feelings, but when I start talking about it, I start to cry and I can't stop it.'
Eaton was on the sidelines watching the finish with some of her friends from the Tufts women’s lacrosse team. Eaton wasn’t hurt, but she still suffers from the lasting effects of that day. A closed-circuit television image later showed that three of her teammates were standing right in front of bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, as he allegedly planted one of the bombs. Some of the Tufts students were hit by shrapnel. Everyone has since recovered.
Eaton explains why she and some of her former teammates decided they wanted to run in this year’s race.
“We decided in May that we were going to run it this year as a group, to do it together — just to prove how strong we are, how strong the lacrosse team is," she said. "It’s more of a mental thing I think for the three of us to do.”
If there's strength in numbers, then this year's Tufts Marathon Team truly is Boston Strong. On Marathon Monday, they'll field a team of 156 runners.
Mackenzie Loy is a graduate of Tufts. She and her father Steven are running with the group. I recently met Mackenzie after she had finished a training run with her team. It took her back to the exact spot on the course where she was stopped last year: mile 25, just a mile from the finish.
"It was a little emotional running down Boylston today, because I never got to do that,” she said.
It was the first time Loy had returned there since the bombings.
“I mean, running a marathon is an emotional event already and kind of getting that shock of not getting to finish and then hearing why and then having the panic afterwards," she said. "I think finishing this year you get to complete that emotional cycle of the marathon that was just you know so much more heightened by the events.”
The chaos at the finish line last year caused confusion and separated Loy from her family for hours. This year she has a contingency plan. Her family will pick out a meeting place and everyone will carry a map of Boston, a phone and a Charlie Card.
This year’s Boston Marathon will also be a little different for Megerle. This will be his 10th marathon with the team but, because of increased security, he says he won’t be allowed to greet his runners at the finish line.
“Unfortunately, this year I probably won’t be at the finish line, so I have to brace myself, psychologically,” he said.
Megerle still plans to get as close as he can to greet his runners. He longs to see them as they become part of a select group who dared to go the distance few others have. Even after all these years, the coach says the Boston Marathon still takes his breath away.
Watch the Greater Boston segment:
