A fifth-grade teacher and mother of four, Stacy Shaw, of Hastings, Nebraska, started running “because it was a way that I could go out the door and shut out the world.”

Then the world intruded.

Hobbled by ankle tendonitis that vastly slowed her usual pace, Shaw, 47, reached the finish line of the Boston Marathon just as the first of two explosions went off.



Now she’s as determined to return to Boston next year as she was to finish the race last week in spite of medical advice that she drop out.



“I teach my students perseverance,” says Shaw, who ran her first 5-K on a lark five years ago. “I teach them to finish what they start.”



Ten days before the marathon, Shaw’s ankle had swelled so badly she couldn’t walk. An MRI revealed severe tendonitis.

Her doctor didn’t even try to talk her out of running Boston. He put her on steroids to reduce the swelling and told her to stay off her feet till then.



“I was hoping by some miracle that I could run the race” and beat her 3:03:18 PR, set in 2011, she says. “And once I got there and was with all those other runners, I thought, ‘This is awesome. I’ll find another time to break 3:00.’”



By Mile 9, however, Shaw was in pain. Medics wrapped her leg at Mile 13 and again at Mile 21, and encouraged her to drop out. But Shaw kept going, mostly walking, urged on by the crowd who, seeing her Team Nebraska shirt, shouted, “Go Huskers!”



Shaw “ran-walked,” she says, running a few steps and then slowing. Downhill hurt more than uphill.

“I really just thought I would savor every moment of this course,” she says. “I came all that way. Why would I step off that course? I’m not too proud to walk.”



Shaw had run three marathons before she got to Boston. “Everybody talks about it. I’ve heard about it forever, that you have to do it,” she says.



When she turned the corner from Hereford onto Boylston Street, the crowd was even louder.



“They were all yelling, ‘You can do it! You can run!’ I was awe-inspired. Because the crowd was so amazing, I had to at least try to run.”



She hobbled to the finish with a net time of 4:44:14, the slowest of the 17,580 runners who were able to complete the race.

“I hadn’t even gotten to the water yet,” she says. “We heard this sound like a cannon. And the first thing that went through my head was, ‘Is this part of a ceremony?’ Then I turned around and saw the smoke. I think we all in our heads thought it was some sort of an accident.”



Volunteers kept Shaw and other runners moving.



“They didn’t panic. They didn’t flinch. They just said, ‘Keep walking.’ They kept handing us our things.”



One even made sure that she got her medal.



“I forgot about it, and they were practically shoving them in our faces,” she says. “I think most of us would have just kept going on without them.”



Her thoughts were on her son, who’d come with her.



“That was the first thing I thought—that I hoped he wasn’t back there because of my stubbornness to finish this race.”



Numb, she followed the instructions and kept moving forward. When it was time to claim her bag—and cell phone—she had to ask a police officer to read her race number off her bib.



“My mind wasn’t working,” Shaw says.



The first call didn’t go through. But the second reunited mother with son, who put her in a taxi as her leg began to ache again.



Locked down in her hotel for the rest of the day, Shaw waited until the restaurant was finally opened so that guests could get some food.

The next day, she set out in her BAA jacket to look around.



“I almost felt a little guilty,” Shaw says. But she donned the jacket, she says, “to show respect, that we were still there, and that the Boston Marathon is still a really cool event.”



As Shaw and her son toured Boston and neighboring Cambridge, they passed people sitting alone with their thoughts on Boston Common. “It was pretty mellow and pretty quiet,” she says. “Everyone seemed so kind.”

It bothered her a little when a newspaper story described her as the slowest runner in the marathon, since nearly 5,000 others were behind her, unable to complete the race, when she finished. “But that’s not my biggest problem in the world.”

Mostly, she avoided the news. “I watched enough to know what was going on, but I don’t think there’s a need to try to watch a horrific event and just relive it.”



Still, says Shaw, speaking about 8-year-old victim Martin Richard, “I was so angry when I heard that little boy died. I wanted to go out and find the guy who did this.” Nor did it escape her notice that spectators like the ones who’d given her the will to finish were among the maimed and dead.



Back in Hastings, wearing a brace on her sore ankle, Shaw was greeted by handmade placards, flowers, and cookies by her fifth-graders at the Longfellow Elementary School.



“I talked to them about our freedoms—that you can never let evil people take away your freedom, never let fear dictate what you do. Things like this are going to happen, and we should bring goodness out of it.”

“They were really scared” by what had happened, she says—especially because they had been tracking her, excitedly, and her progress in the marathon. Some had called her family in Hastings, worried.



“These kids will never forget that,” Shaw says.



Neither will she.



“You should not forget these kinds of things, because it makes you stronger and better.”



She’s already planning on a marathon this summer to qualify for next year’s Boston.



“I think people are going to be even more excited and show the world we’re not afraid,” Shaw says. “And I’m going to go back to say, ‘See? I’m not the slowest runner.’”

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article stated Stacy Shaw was the final, official finisher. That was inaccurate. The final finisher was recorded at 2:57 p.m., seven minutes after the first explosion.

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