Running partners share ‘surreal’ experience in Boston

Editor’s note: Christine Fenske and Stacie (Smith) Lienemann trained for the Boston Marathon together for months, but nothing could have prepared them for what happened Monday, April 15, 2013.
Stacie is the daughter of Linda and Terry Smith of Benson. Her husband, Phil Lienemann, is the son of Steve and Barb Lienemann of Morris. They live in Cottonwood where Phil is the principal of Lakeview School and Stacie is also employed at Lakeview School as a paraprofessional. Stacie is a 1995 Benson High School graduate.
Reprinted courtesy of Marshall Independent
This year’s Boston Marathon was Christine Fenske’s fourth. And it’s a given that it will be her most memorable, only not for the right reasons.
Fenske, a Title I reading and math teacher at Lakeview, finished Monday’s marathon with her running partner Stacie Lienemann in 3 hours, 45 minutes - about 35 minutes before what would be the first of two explosions to rock the area around the finish line.
“Since I’ve done the marathon before and had never heard anything like that I knew something must have been going on,” said Fenske, who along with Lienemann had been training for the Boston Marathon since early December. “My first reaction was that I needed to find my husband.”
Christine Fenske, left, and Stacie Lienemann stop for a photo at the finish line of the Boston Marathon Sunday, a day before a pair of explosions killed three people and injured more than 170.
“I didn’t know what to think,” said Lienemann, an eighth-grade paraprofessional at Lakeview. “Everybody had that surreal look on their face, and Christine goes, ‘That’s not normal.’”
Then, 12 seconds later, a second blast.
“That’s when we both knew that something wasn’t right,” Lienemann said. “There was kind of a silence where we were, and the sirens started. We knew we needed to find our husbands.”
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