What started as a planned run with friends has broadened into a worldwide effort to raise funds for Mass General and other charities helping the victims of Monday’s bombing in Boston.
Burlington Vermont resident Ryan Polly was running in his first ever marathon on Monday.
He and other marathoners were about a mile from the finish line when the explosions occurred. He initially thought emergency vehicles were responding to a heart attack victim, but as he got closer, he encountered chaos and panic.
Ryan Polly recounts that on their four-hour drive back to Vermont, he and his wife agreed to cancel a party they had planned to celebrate his first marathon. But he felt he still needed to do something.
The Facebook page for the Walk or Run in Support of the Boston Marathon Victims is getting pledges from across the country and as far away as the Phillipines. By early Wednesday afternoon 340 people had signed up on the Facebook page to run in Burlington. Others plan to run when they can at their individual locations. Among them is Manchester, Vermont Planning Director Lee Krohn, who plans to be in Burlington on Saturday afternoon to run.
The Walk or Run in Support of the Boston Marathon Victims will start at the ECHO Center on the Burlington waterfront at 4 o’clock Saturday afternoon. Suggested donations of 40 dollars - the typical entry fee for a marathon - can be designated for Mass Generalor The One Fund.
