New York, April 21 (IANS) Rebekah Gregory finished the Boston Marathon, two years after she lost a leg in the deadly attacks of bombing, a media report said on Tuesday.
Returning to the race that caused her to become an amputee, Boston Marathon bombing victim Gregory, 27, crossed the finish line on Monday, holding the hands of her trainer, Xinhua reported.
After running 26.2 miles on her good leg and a prosthetic, she fell to her knees, apparently overwhelmed with emotion.
“Just to know that I was crossing the finish line on my own foot and I wasn’t in a wheelchair like last year and I wasn’t laying on the pavement fighting for my life like the year before,” Gregory told ABC News after crossing the finish line. “I’ve come a long way and I’m just going to keep going because there’s no stopping me.”
Gregory was at the finish line of the Boston Marathon when a bomb exploded two years ago, and she wrote that she thought she would die on the pavement. After undergoing several operations, doctors amputated her left leg in November. Gregory became one of 16 marathon victims to lose a limb.
She said the experience was “absolutely surreal,” but the weather was working against her. Halfway through, with a swollen leg and a twisted knee after an encounter with a pothole, Gregory wondered whether she could finish.
“When I was able to see the finish line I knew I had to finish,” she said. “I had made a promise to myself and that’s what I did.”
“This is the day….I take my life back,” she wrote on Facebook before the race started, posting a photo of herself decked out in race gear.
Gregory said she started strength training one week before her leg was amputated last November. Since her surgery, she has tried to train five days a week for at least an hour, focusing on both strength and endurance.