IGH Teacher Witnesses Marathon Bombing; 'My First Instinct Was to Get Out'

At first, Heather Walseth thought the rumble she heard was thunder.

But then Walseth, who had just finished the Boston Marathon, looked back toward the finish line to see smoke rising. That's when the second explosion detonated.

"At that moment, I realized something was terribly wrong, and my first instinct was to get out as fast as I could," said Walseth, a Inver Grove Heights resident and an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher at Rosemount High School and Deerwood Elementary School in District 196.

Walseth completed the race roughly 10 minutes before the first of two explosions ripped through the crowd gathered near the finish line on Boylston Street in Boston. The explosions, which killed three and injured more than 170 on Monday, were denounced as a terrorist action by President Barack Obama earlier this week.

The Monday race was Walseth's second Boston Marathon; she ran in 2012 during 90-degree temperatures, and was hoping for redemption and improved results this year. Walseth, who lives in Inver Grove Heights, has participated in 13 marathons.

The veteran runner finished in 3 hours and 59 minutes—roughly 10 minutes before the first bomb. She was getting food, gathering her things and moving out of the finishing area when the bombs went off.

"This was something that you see on TV, and obviously no one ever thinks they’re going to have to experience anything like that," Walseth said.

Despite the bombings, the crowds around the marathon finish line didn't panic, Walseth said. She was able to get back to her hotel, where she flipped on the TV for more information. Over the course of the day, she was bombarded by texts, messages and phone calls from worried friends and family. Fortunately, she and everyone she knew at the event was safe and uninjured, she said.

Walseth and her brother were running the race this year in tribute to Walseth's father, a marathon enthusiast who recently passed away. The bombing tarnished the event, which should have been "a day of celebration, a day of joy," she said.

"I'm saddened once again knowing that we will always think of the terrible tragedy that occurred instead of the pride my dad would have had," Walseth wrote in an email to Patch. "The person(s) responsible for this event not only caused terror, injury and death, but they have robbed us of happy memories."

Heather Walseth wasn't the only Dakota County resident running the Boston Marathon on Monday. Read Rosemount High School Lacrosse Coach Lance Kuehn's account of the bombings.