Why hundreds will race for Boston

CNN asked our iReporters to pledge to run a marathon, or shorter race, before the 1-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon Bombing. "The bombings reminded so many of us why we enjoy running, and that these violent acts can't shake and define a city like Boston," said Anusha Mookherjee, who grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. She was inspired to run the Boston Athletic Association 10K -- her first road race -- and a half-marathon. She continues to run three times a week.

"I wanted to run for those that can't run anymore," said Boston resident Ashley Seymour. She was standing near the Boston Marathon finish line when the first bomb went off. She had been a runner all her life, but hadn't done a race since tearing her ACL in 2011. Running became part of her emotional healing process. Since the bombings, she has run a 10K and a half-marathon.

"I couldn't go home, and I couldn't go to work, so other than watching cable news 24/7, I had running," said Mark Giannetti, left, who lived and worked within a block of each bomb. He and his friend, Jess, right, ran a 5K and 10K race together last year. He's training for a half-marathon.

"So much blood, sweat and tears go into preparing for and racing a marathon and to have the fruit of your labor snatched away in such an evil manner haunted me," said Jennifer Kirkpatrick, right, from Bonham, Texas. At the time of the bombings, she had recently run her first half-marathon. She ran another half-marathon in support of the victims and plans to run the Dallas marathon this year.

Terry Moorhead of Phoenix did not plan to run another marathon -- this was his sixth -- but after the bombings, "I I felt compelled to do at least one more. I think about how lucky I am to be able to run, and I will never take it for granted." He proudly wore a Boston Strong shirt for the Arizona Rock 'n' Roll Marathon in January 2014.

"Running has been a stress relief for me, but this year meant a little more," said Boston resident Gina Berrettoni, who knew several people who were running last year's Boston Marathon. Thankfully, none of her friends were injured. She has run several races since the attack, including a 10K, a half-marathon and a relay.

"The running community is one of the most supportive, nonjudgmental and uplifting I have ever had the pleasure to be a part of," said Heather Nees, left, of Chesterfield, Virginia. Since pledging to "Run for Boston," she has completed two 5K's and an 8K, with another 5K coming up.

"The tight muscles -- the little aches and pains -- remind me that I'm alive," said Lori Brainard of Washington. She started running in 2004, but had been on a hiatus. Brainard, who grew up in Somerville, Massachusetts, signed up for her first race after the Boston Marathon bombing.

"I wanted to do something after the bombings, but didn't know what I could do," said runner Robyn Parker, right, of New Hampshire. She was inspired to break her every-other-year marathon schedule. She ran the Rock 'n' Roll San Antonio Marathon in November alongside her daughter, Meredith.

"I am still not a strong runner, but I knew I had to finish this race to honor all the people affected by the Boston tragedy," said Ezra Mueller, right, who ran the 25 kilometer "Big Berlin" race in Germany in May with a "Run for Boston" on her back. "With the support of the other runners loudly cheering me on. I dragged myself across the finish."

"Like so many runners, after that day, I felt helpless, betrayed and full of emotion," said Agata Jasniewski from Massapequa Park, New York. She was already planning to run the Chicago Marathon in 2013, but after the bombing it became "more than a race," she said.

• John Sutter organizes Run for Boston group on CNN iReport


• More than 300 runners pledge to run races in solidarity


• Sutter: The running community has rallied around the tragedy


• iReporter Theresa Kutsch: 'I pledged to run for those who no longer can'

Editor's note: John D. Sutter is a columnist for CNN Opinion and creator of CNN's Change the List project. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. E-mail him at ctl@cnn.com. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) -- I was about halfway through the marathon when I saw the man with the plastic pink flamingo. Like me, he was jogging down a highway in coastal North Carolina. Unlike me, he had a beanie -- yes, with propeller -- perched on his head.

I was running my first marathon, inspired by the terrorists-be-dammed attitude emanating from the #runforboston hashtag after the Boston Marathon bombing. I'd pledged to run the race shortly after two blasts at that race in April of last year killed three people and injured hundreds. And I'd asked people from CNN's iReport community to join me, documenting our yearlong journeys together online. More than 300 people joined the project. We don't share geography or ideology, but we do share the run -- a willingness to try to do something in response to tragedy.

The man with the flamingo was Scot Barco, a marathon mini-celebrity of sorts who was running his 100th 26.2 mile race -- a feat that seemed like the most insane running-related thing (maybe anything-related thing) I'd heard up to that point.

That was before Barco told me two more facts: He got engaged on a marathon; and got married on mile six of a subsequent marathon. Kept running till the end.

I jogged alongside him for a few minutes on that Sunday in November at the Outer Banks Marathon, both because I was curious and because I hoped to learn something. I wanted to finish the race, but wasn't entirely sure I could. The farthest I'd run before I started training, seven months before then, was six miles. I had to do a training program in order to start a for-real marathon-training program. Plus, I've been told that when I jog I look something like a constipated Velociraptor.

I don't seem like the person who's cut out for this.

I needed help.

But I didn't anticipate what Flamingo Man would teach me.

It's been about a year since April 15, 2013, when the bombs went off in Boston. I can't claim to understand what it's been like for the victims of that tragedy or for their families. But I can tell you that people around the world, including myself, were inspired to do something personal and positive in response to that dark day. By running in response to the tragedy, we weren't attempting to negate the irreparable harm done to the people of Boston last year. We felt helpless in that moment, and we wanted to do something, anything, to try to process it.

We laced up some sneakers and took to the streets.

Becca Obergefell seemed like the movement's online leader. The young woman from Ohio started a Google Doc where people all over the world could log the miles they'd run in honor of the victims and survivors, and in solidarity with the city. She encouraged people to use apps like Charity Miles that donate to nonprofits as you go. More than 35,000 miles were logged on a Google Doc she created shortly after the blasts.

"The day I identified myself as a runner was the day I heard about the bombings at the Boston Marathon," wrote on iReporter Theresa Kutsch, 55, a typist in Iowa City, Iowa. "I vowed to keep up my own training to honor the runners and fans whose races and lives were interrupted in Boston," she wrote.

What I realized after joining running's enthusiastic cohort is just how much this community of individuals matters -- and how it takes care of its own.

John Sutter

"I pledged to run for those who no longer can."

What I realized after joining running's enthusiastic cohort is just how much this community of individuals matters -- and how it takes care of its own.

Many runners have needed that community a little more this year.

Take Mark Giannetti, a 24-year-old market analyst who lives and works within blocks of the bombing site in Boston. He was evacuated from his office with only a gym bag the day of the bombing, and was holed up for days at his mom's house, unable to return to the area. Partly because of those logistics -- no clothes other than those for a run -- and partly because he just felt like he needed to do something, Giannetti, who never had run competitively, started running through his city.

He wanted to figure out, in a literal sense: "Where's the edge of where I'm allowed to be?" How close could he get to his home, which was acting as a staging post?

But he also would stretch his personal limits.

Soon he found a large group of like-minded people, out there on the streets just trying to relieve the stress of being evacuated from home and work. They started running meet-ups, donated to the One Fund Boston charity to help the bombing victims -- and eventually formed a community that still exists.

Giannetti is currently training for a half-marathon and hopes eventually to qualify to run a full one in Boston. His dad died in February, and the last time he saw his father was at a 5K race outside Boston, which his dad had flown in from Colorado to watch.

He uploaded a finish photo with his dad and mom to CNN iReport.

Giannetti took first place in the race for his age group.

It was only after his dad died that Giannetti realized, while digging through his father's things, that he had medals from track and cross-country races in high school, and that he had new and apparently unused triathlete jerseys.

Running became a bridge to his dad.

And a way to cope with the bombing.

"Starting running in a really stressful time showed me how much potential running has for being a stress reliever," he said. "It's kind of a lifestyle. Once you get into it you get pretty addicted to it. You feel so much better."

"It became a lifestyle and it became a community as well."

I've encountered and read about so many incredible people over the past year. In April, two weeks after the Boston bombing, I went to Oklahoma City to watch Sara Hunt finish the marathon she started in Boston, but wasn't allowed to complete.

I thought of her and her teary-eyed finish when I was running my own race. How she met strangers along the route who helped her push through a difficult run.

And I thought of heroes like Adrianne Haslet-Davis, a dancer who lost her left foot in the second blast in Boston and vowed to dance again.

You can see her doing just that in a CNN documentary, "Survivor Diaries."

My journey isn't as meaningful as those.

But since I'd made the pledge, and since I'd spent so many months training to get to that super-flat course in the coast of North Carolina, I did want to finish. Nike+ tells me I logged more than 400 miles in my seven months of training (I didn't use the app for every single run, and it's a little glitch-prone, so that's an estimate). I'd run 20 miles before the race, but never the extra 6.2 you need for a marathon.

I ran up behind Barco, the man with the pink flamingo, hoping for tips.

What I found was a person in crisis.

He hid it at first, but I soon realized Barco was in immense pain. His ankle was shot, probably from the wear and tear of so many races in such a short time, he said. He started tearing up as he told me how dozens of his friends had come to the race, holding signs with his name and face on them, to support his 100th marathon.

What if he didn't finish? What if he let them down?

I know nothing about marathon running, really, and I'd never met Barco before. But I walked beside him for a several minutes and offered any consolation and encouragement I could. I told him he absolutely would make it.

He'd already run 99 marathons. What's half a marathon more?

I know from the online register that he did finish the race. And I want him to know he was part of the reason I did, too. I had to -- not just for myself but for him. And for all the other people who I'd met and who helped me over the course of the year.

Even at his weakest point, he still offered me encouragement.

It's why he carries the flamingo, which has its own Facebook page: Magenta the Road Trip Flamingo. He hopes it might lighten someone else's load.

"You've gotta try to get out there and be a positive force on the marathon course as well as in the world," he told me.

Running a marathon is something no person can do alone.

All runners know that.

So you help each other.

You run towards the blast to help the victims.

You raise money to heal the wounded.

You offer kind words to a stranger.

It's a given, just what you do.

And when you're around them for a while, it starts to seem contagious.

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