‘We cannot let anybody stop what should be normal life’

Irishwoman Mary Varden, running her 10th Boston Marathon, crossed the finishing line just a few minutes before the first blast.

The fitness instructor, who is originally from Co Waterford and has lived in Quincy, Massachusetts for the past 26 years, said she had thought about what might have happened had she not run as fast and was closer to the blast.

“It crossed my mind because I did run it slower before,” said the Irish runner, wearing bib number 23650 and one of 108 Irish citizens listed by the marathon’s organisers on the race website.

The marathon stop-clock read four hours, nine minutes and 44 seconds at the time of the first blast. The clock read four hours, five minutes and five seconds when Ms Varden crossed the line.

Following the first blast, there was a lot of confusion among the runners who had finished the race about what had happened, she said.

“It was very loud and it was very clear. It definitely sounded like a bomb or an explosion. It was clear. It sounded like a bang – it did not sound good,” she said in a telephone interview from her home.

Her family and friends were not in the vicinity of the blasts and were safe, she said. She paid tribute to the medics and emergency services who were “on top of its straight away,” she said.

Ms Varden will not let the attacks deter her from running in an 11th Boston Marathon.

“I definitely would not let it stop me running again,” she said. “We cannot let anybody stop what should be normal life. “You have to keep going. You cannot let these people take over. They are not the winners. The people who ran are the winners.”