Seven runners from Greater Youngstown have no fear of running in Boston Marathon on Monday

Seven runners from Greater Youngstown have no fear of running in Boston Marathon on Monday

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It’s just a runner thing.

That’s why seven local runners will compete in the 118th-annual Boston Marathon today.

When the gun goes off they will unite with 38,000 other runners.

Through sweat, emotion and whatever physical pain might strike them, they will run, or in some cases fly 26.2 miles, to get to the finish line — a place of havoc last year after an attack left more than 260 injured and three dead.

Yet these runners have no fear. Maybe a little apprehension, but no fear. After all, they qualified for a difficult, prestigious race that they know as the best of the best.

On Wednesday, the group met for the last “Wednesday night group run” at Second Sole in Boardman.

“I knew immediately I wanted to go back” to the Boston Marathon, said Jane Timmins, 35, of Huron, Ohio.

This is Timmins’ second time running the marathon. She ran it first in 2011. Her qualifying time is 3:33.

“I felt like I owed it to myself and the victims and the running community. We need to send the message that we will not be defeated. It’s going to be a wave of emotions,” Timmins said.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.