Former champ Jacqueline Hansen hopes for drama­free Boston Marathon this year By MARK COOPER 2014­04­20 09:14:29

When the pressure­cooker bombs exploded, Jacqueline Hansen should have been at the finish line.

She would have been there, if the runner she trained was on pace. Jeaney Garcia expected to finish in 4 hours, or 4:10 at worst. Hansen would be greeting her there at the finish line.

But Hansen received Garcia’s splits throughout the race. She was running behind, closer to 4:30 than 4 hours. She started too fast; the 16 miles of downhill running on Boston’s course ate up her legs.

So as Hansen prepared to leave the hotel, a three­minute walk from the finish, she hesitated. She was on the sidewalk, preparing to walk back, when the first bomb went off.

At 4:09:43.

“I know every other person has a story about coulda, woulda, shoulda,” Hansen said. “But I did tell her that was the best worst race she ever had.

“It delayed her and it delayed me.”

A Granada Hills High, Pierce College and Cal State Northridge alumna, Hansen, of Topanga, won the 1973 Boston Marathon, launching her career as a marathon runner and gender equality advocate. She went back last year, shooting the official starting gun for the women’s race as part of a celebration honoring Hansen 40 years after her triumph. She brought four runners she trained with her to compete and planned to stake out the finish line waiting for them.

She greeted each of the first three when they finished, walking them back to the hotel. Then the rest of the day turned to chaos, worry and tears. One year later, Hansen, who is also an assistant cross country coach at St. Bernard’s in Playa del Rey and a professor in Loyola Marymount’s School of Education, is back in Boston for Monday’s race, and Garcia is with her, determined to cross the finish line once and for all.

Boylston Street, where the finish line is located, has served as the setting for many of the most dramatic moments in Hansen’s life, good and bad.

The best thing that can happen on Monday is a drama­free race.

MARATHON ‘ROYALTY’

The 2013 Boston Marathon was meant to be a celebration for Hansen. She got the VIP treatment 40 years after capturing the women’s race in 1973.

She attended breakfasts followed by luncheons and dinners, speaking at events and receiving applause. Hansen was a pioneer and advocate for women’s distance running and played a large role in the inclusion of long­distance women’s races in the Olympics.

She brought along her four runners to all the events, introducing them to other race winners and race officials. “There’s this history everywhere,” said Charlie Gardner, one of the runners with her last year. “And royalty there, with the fact that she’s won it and she knows everybody and these people are all famous in the running community.”

Hansen’s pinnacle moment was supposed to be at the starting line, where she addressed the runners before shooting off the starting gun.

“I’ve run a mile in your shoes, and I wish I were standing next to you right now,” she said. “But just remember a lot of women before you fought really hard for your right to run. So give it all you got!”

Hansen received a police escort to the finish line so she could be there, waiting for her runners.

SURPRISE VICTORY

Hansen’s entrance into the 1973 Boston Marathon was much more unheralded.

It was only the second marathon for a 24­year­old college student who was more familiar with backpacking than long­distance running. Hansen was a student in the first girls track class at Granada Hills High but didn’t even qualify for the city meet.

While running at Cal State Northridge, she got linked with the San Fernando Valley Track Club, coached by Laszlo Tabori, a former Hungarian Olympian who became the third man in the world to run a 4­minute mile. She worked out 13 times per week, pushing herself in Tabori’s speed drills.

She ran the Western Hemisphere Marathon in Culver City first before going to Boston for the 1973 race.

Her lack of knowledge about running a marathon made it astonishing that she finished, let alone won.

As if she was preparing for a long hike, she wore her thickest, heaviest pair of shoes and two pairs of socks. Wanting to dress the part for Patriots Day, she wore blue and white terrycloth shorts.

The shorts absorbed all of the water sprayed at the runners as she ran the course. When she squeezed them out, the water splashed into her socks and sneakers.

Still, she heard the “here comes the first woman” calls from the crowd as she crossed the line in 3:05:59 to win.

“The first marathon changed my life and launched my career,” Hansen said.

AFTER THE BLAST

At the finish line last year, Hansen, who no longer runs herself, greeted the first three of her runners. She walked each of them back to the hotel on the other side of Copley Square.

She saw Garcia’s splits indicated she would be late, so she lingered at the hotel a little longer, allowing Gardner, who finished the race, to complete his shower.

They were on a sidewalk when they heard the first explosion.

Maybe it was a gas explosion at a construction site, Hansen thought. Thirteen seconds later, the second bomb burst. As Hansen stepped off a curb to cross the street, she was nearly run over by emergency vehicles rushing to the scene.

She and Gardner walked toward the finish line, anyway, mainly in search of Garcia, but they were turned back to the hotel as the streets were locked down.

Hansen worried Garcia was close to the finish line; Garcia worried Hansen was waiting at it. Hansen trains her runners virtually – Garcia lives in Hawaii – but Garcia used to live in Los Angeles and is one of Hansen’s best friends.

“We both were thinking the worst had happened to the other,” Hansen said. Inside the hotel room, Hansen responded to floods of messages checking on her status. That included one from Sherston Sanz, St. Bernard’s cross country coach, who had just talked with Hansen about joining his staff for the following fall.

“The first thing I did was I jumped on my phone,” said Sanz, who said having a “legend” like Hansen on staff inspired his runners, both boys and girls, this fall.

But Garcia had no cellphone with her on the course to relay that she was OK.

Garcia was safe, but the runners were diverted, turned around on the course. In an unknown city, with no way to reach Hansen, she wandered sidestreets. She was freezing, lacking the silver blankets provided to marathon runners after they complete a race. She worried hypothermia might be setting in.

Finally, a Boston College senior saw Garcia shivering and provided her a jacket and use of her cellphone. She walked with Garcia for an hour and a half back to the hotel.

Two­and­a­half hours after the explosions and the disarray, Hansen and her runner were reunited.

“We broke down and just sobbed,” Garcia said. “There was no holding back. We just held each other and just sobbed and just so happy to see each other.”

Hansen didn’t sleep well the night after the bombing, finding herself woken by every noise made outside her window. She flew out the next day, though she and her runners had to walk a short distance to catch a taxi because the hotel was in a zoned­off area.

When she boarded the plane and sat back in her seat, she expected to sleep uninterrupted, finally.

Instead, when she closed her eyes, she cried, thinking about the victims.

“There’s just no rhyme or reason,” Hansen said. “Just wretched, horrible, evil.”

NO FEAR THIS YEAR

Hansen expects this year to be “safer than ever,” just like the Chicago Marathon she attended last October.

While last year was for Hansen – Garcia said she wanted to run in last year’s marathon to be there for the anniversary – Monday is for Garcia. Hansen believes Garcia can finish under the 4­hour mark and can’t wait to be at the finish line waiting.

Just as she planned to be last year.

“I just hate the whole thought of it,” Hansen said, “but I don’t know. Somehow, I feel like maybe Tuesday morning, things will be back to normal.”

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