Runners can literally go head over heels for the world’s most famous marathon.

here is no place that I would rather be than Boston in April. Boston

2003 was to be my third consecutive Boston Marathon. I managed to persuade my masters women’s running team, the STARTLINE Babes, that we should go again, only to have life throw me an apparent detour. We had just sent in our entries and made

A The STARTLINE masters women’s racing team places in their USATF Minnesota yearly standings. From left: Donna Melody, Dana Daly, author Sheri Davich, Marien Bradsher,

our hotel reservations when! poe Flato, and Jean Adams.

found out that I was unexpectedly expecting. I was 41 years old, and my fourth child was on the way.

I was thrilled! With three boys at home, I thought that this could be the little girl who would balance my family. The testosterone just drips down the walls at my house. Even the dog, cats, and birds are male. Girl or boy, I just felt blessed that I was given another opportunity to experience the miracle of a baby. I arranged a dinner with the Babes to celebrate the upcoming Christmas holidays and announce my news. They were happy for me, over the moon, but knew that Boston was no longer an option for me.

I went to my ob-gyn for a routine ultrasound at 10 weeks. The moment I saw the pictures on the screen, I knew that something was horribly wrong. Where I should have seen a small baby, a beating heart, there was only blackness. The doctor was ominously silent. She slid the instrument over my abdomen again and again, but there was nothing to be found. She said simply, “I’m sorry. This appears to be a blighted ovum. This is a type of miscarriage.”

She explained that even though I had experienced no bleeding or signs that anything was wrong, the baby I carried had died. My reaction was instinctive. I couldn’t breathe. I knelt over and waited for the pain. When it came, it felt as though I had been hit by a train. My husband just sat by helplessly, not knowing what he should do to help me. There was nothing he could do. He took me through the doctor’s waiting room. Another expectant mom was waiting there. He had me sit down as the doctor scheduled a follow-up appointment for me. I was gasping, trying to stop crying, and just couldn’t. The woman looked at me, but I tried not to look at her. What I was experiencing was probably her greatest fear right then.

Thad a D and C. The doctor thought nature might take care of things, but it did not. She said that I might have wanted the baby so badly that my mind controlled my body and would not let the ovum go.

Recuperation did not come easily

In the days that followed, I was tired, but at night I could not sleep. I would watch the clock. I knew that time was part of the remedy, but time was moving too slowly for me.

My husband was missing me. My children were suffering. I had to find a way to climb out of the abyss that I found myself in. I turned to my friends and to my running, both of which had always been there for me. I begged my friends to allow me back into the Boston trip. Since I had canceled, anticipating my advanced pregnancy, my spot had been filled. I promised to sleep in the closet if Thad to, but I needed to make the trip. And as always, my running friends came through for me.

This was at the end of January. I had too little time to train properly, but just being there was the goal. The long night was coming to an end, and it was going to happen in Boston.

I was still recovering from the miscarriage. My periods were very heavy, and the week leading up to the race was particularly bad. Race day dawned sunny and warm. I toed the line in black pants. I didn’t want to worry about bloodstains. Everyone said the pants were too warm, but I decided to wear them anyway. That was a mistake! I knew very well that I should dress based on the weather.

I was moving along pretty well, maintaining an 8:30 to 8:45 pace. I saw Will Ferrell at about mile eight. He is one of my favorite entertainers, and it was a thrill to run alongside him for a bit. I said nothing to him as he was focused on his race. As a fellow athlete, you have to respect that.

In the middle of the hills, at about mile 18, I keeled over. That is the only way to describe what happened. I didn’t feel it coming until my face hit the pavement. Theard a voice yell “Runner down!” and I realized that being face down in the

Bruised, broken, and bloody, the author
never says quit.

middle of the road with all those running feet around me was not the best place to be. I turned over, and a race official in a white jacket was right there.

He helped me up, pulled me off the road, and asked if I was OK. Ihad impaled my lower lip on my teeth and had to pull it off. I had quite a fat lip later and was black and blue, but my lip probably saved my teeth. I had scrapes on my upper lip, my cheek, and my knees, as well as on my shoulder. The official did his best to persuade me to stop, but I wanted to keep going. I continued on but was “out of the groove” and began to take walk breaks.

As always in Boston, there was an exuberant crowd, but when I came by, it would get eerily silent. I stopped and asked someone if I looked really bad, and that person lied and said “No” and handed me a cup of water and a handkerchief. I blotted my face, and the handkerchief was covered in blood. When I tried to grip the water cup, I realized that I couldn’t close my left hand around it. I held my hands up to compare them, and my left wrist was noticeably swollen. The situation just got better and better!

At one point, as I walked along, a sympathetic man yelled to me, “I had a dream about you last night,” and another responded, “I had a nightmare about that last night.” It was a long afternoon.

Taken to the medical tent

When I finally crossed the finish line about four and a half hours into it, I was whisked directly to the medical tent. That was a first for me, and hopefully a last. Dehydrated people look like they are dying. Pump some fluid into them and a miracle happens.

From the medical tent, I had my first ambulance ride to Beth Israel Hospital, and with the siren on, too! My sons were very impressed with that. The people there were wonderful. I found out my wrist was broken. The medical staff put a temporary cast on and sent me to my hotel in a taxi with two other runners who also required care. The cost of the taxi was paid by the race, which I thought was

© MarathonFoto

very classy and necessary, as I didn’t have a cent with me. You should always carry money with you in a race. You never know when it might come in handy.

By this time it was about 9:30 p.m., and I hadn’t eaten since morning. At the hotel, my friends got me in the shower and ordered a nice, juicy burger from room service. I discovered that the IV needle was still taped on to my arm. It hadn’t been removed at the hospital before I was sent to the hotel. We called the hospital, which said that I should come back. No way! We called the front desk, thinking a medical person might be on call. A hotel employee came up to the room out of curiosity just to get a look at me but had no idea how to remove the needle, so we figured it out ourselves.

The next day when my husband picked me up at the airport, he just looked at me and said “Aaawwww” and wrapped me in a big hug. I looked like I had been in a bar fight.

About a month later, I was running a half-marathon and someone I did not know came up and asked me if I was “Boston Sheri.” I was dumbfounded! How could someone else know? Two more people asked me the same thing before the day was through. Falling on my face at Boston was not something I wanted to be famous for. The last person who asked said my picture was on the Internet. One of my friends had taken my picture at the hotel and had posted it on her running