Stillwater Man Helps Carry Fellow Boston Marathoner
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- As the soreness sets in for Boston Marathon runners, so do the images. A few hundred meters from the finish line, a runner could no longer stand.
Several others stopped to carry him closer so he could gain strength and cross the finish line. One of the helper is from Stillwater, and the moment so many are talking about is one which Mike Johnson never thought would be discussed again.
"I told my friends that I'd helped this guy across, but didn't know it got anything past that," Johnson said.
From his temporary room in Boston, he told WCCO it started when a writer tweeted the gesture.
"This weekend has been amazing," he said.
But people were amazed by him. A few hundred meters from finishing a 26.2-mile race, and with only a small amount of energy to spare, he shared it with a man wearing a jersey with the name "Adam."
"All of us just started picking him up and the crowd went berserk," he said.
Making his act even more notable is that he had every reason in the world to be narrowly focused on the finish. Last year, he was stopped a half-mile short by the finishing line bombings.
Johnson decided to return to Boston this year, despite some weather-related obstacles.
"The Minnesota winter we had, training was horrible this year," he said.
But he knows there's always someone worse off.
"I said 'Hey Adam, how you doing?'" And he said, 'I just want to get to the finish line.' I mean, it wasn't a conversation, but just a connection," he said.
Adam was able to cross the finish line on his own. Johnson said he was just one of many runners who helped other runners at Monday's marathon, but his moment just got captured by a photo.