CHICAGO — The first Boylston Street blast broke Lee Ann Yanni’s leg, but it didn’t break her spirit.
The 31-year-old Boston Marathon bombing victim is attempting the near impossible — completing the Chicago Marathon on Sunday just six months after muscles and tissue in her left leg were shredded.
“I don’t care if I have to walk, crawl or piggyback” to finish, she vowed.
“I’m not letting these fools take my first marathon away from me,” she told the Herald. “There are days that I look at my leg and completely break down and then there are days that I go, ‘OK, it doesn’t look so bad.’ ”
Yanni is one of the many bombing victims courageously pushing through the pain while learning to walk — even run — all over again.
“I’m ready to have all that training, and sweat and blood and tears, for the last six months pay off,” Yanni said, slightly out of breath on her last 11-mile training run earlier this week.
Her dream is to finish the 26.2 mile Windy City trek — her first full marathon — in about six hours. She’s run half marathons and plenty of road races, but climbing this once-insurmountable hill will be an emotional milestone.
Just walking normally seemed farfetched not too long ago. Now she’s defying the odds. “You never realize what you do until you have to relearn it,” Yanni said.
The Hub physical therapist was standing with her husband just 10 feet away from the first bomb on Boylston Street on April 15 when blood came gushing out her leg after the explosion. Shrapnel fractured her fibula and tore muscles in her left leg. She can feel the broken bone jostling sometimes when she runs.
She spent eight days in the hospital and went through three surgeries but never considered giving up on Sunday’s race. She’s running in memory of her dad, who died of cancer this time last year.
“I’m excited and I’m nervous knowing this is my last big run,” Yanni said after completing Heartbreak Hill in Newton this week.
The tall neon-colored sock she wears over her wound is a reminder that her body and soul are still healing.
“We are all getting our butts kicked every single day by our therapists, our psychologists or our friends to get back,” Yanni said. “Everybody’s in it to get back to our new normal.”
Yanni said she’ll finally feel normal again once she crosses the finish line in Grant Park with all the world watching just how strong Bostonians can be.
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