Insider Report: Marathon Man

DURHAM, N.H. – Jon Dana, the University of New Hampshire's longtime and widely respected Director of Sports Medicine, has a side gig, one that last month took him to his 45^th straight Boston Marathon.

No, he was not there to run the historic race. While he admires those who take on the grueling task and each year comes away inspired by the runners he meets at the finish line, running it is not for him. He does love to compete and relishes a challenge and biking it, heck yes, if that were an option.

But running 26.5 miles? That's a polite no thank you.

Dana was again there at the finish line – as he has been for the vast majority of his nearly half a century history with the Marathon – to help runners as they completed their day's outing on April 18.

He's there to "catch people" as he puts it, as a team captain of the finish line medical area.

The job of team members is to determine if the competitors need any assistance in recovering from the pounding they have taken, physically and mentally, from running the streets and hills leading into Boston for anywhere from a little over two hours to sometimes quadruple that."

Jon Dana works the finish line back in the day.

Dana and others decide if a person needs to be put in a wheelchair and taken to the medical tent for more attention, or if they can be helped by a little more assistance with walking.

They watch as runners celebrate their accomplishments, running in memory of a friend or a relative, or running in the face of adversity, overcoming an illness or injury.

"Some have amazing stories," Dana said. "We've helped people run their 30^th marathon and helped them run their first. Some talk about training every day for their whole life and other people decided three weeks ago that running it was a great idea."

They see warm embraces and huge smiles, plenty of grimaces from pain and exhaustion and through it all moments of great emotion, person after person.

"This year, maybe 10-15 feet in front of me, some guy stopped and asked, I presume it was his girlfriend, to marry him," Dana said. "That was pretty cool."

Some of the finish line sights are way less cool.

"You see guys with bloody nipples (from shirts chafing their chests) and people with feet so bloody that when they step the blood spills out their shoes," he said. "The myriad of stuff you see is kind of mindboggling. It's all ends of the spectrum."

April 15, 2013

Dana was in his customary spot, maybe 20 yards beyond the finish line and helping runners in droves, on a marathon day that was going like any other on Monday, April 15, 2013 when everyone in the area heard an explosion at 12:49 in the afternoon.

"I was about 40 yards away and at first thought it was a steampipe, or maybe something in the subway blew," Dana said. "There was smoke from the first when we heard the second and then it was quite obvious it was a bomb. By the time the second one exploded, you could smell gunpowder."

Dana headed toward the bomb scene.

"The fence had been blown down and I was stepping over body parts," he said, his voice cracking. "I went to a person in front of the Marathon Sports store and they were alert and oriented and I stayed a minute or two or five, I don't know. I went to another person who was stable and then moved to a mother and daughter who were in real bad shape and stayed with them for a little while. I then stepped out of the elements for a second to kind of catch my breath and come up with what I was going to do next. . . . It was horrible being there. It was more than horrible."
A Boston police officer approached and said there was a threat of a third bomb and people were to leave if they were not doing anything at the moment.

"I had five gauze pads in my back pocket, like I always did for good luck, and five gauze pads were not going to make a big difference there," Dana said.

Back in the medical tent, the focus shifted to tracking down the volunteers who had been in the finish line area by text or phone call and accounting for them all.

"After a while we got kicked out of the medical tent," Dana said. "It was a crime scene and the FBI was already working it. I actually left way earlier that day than normal. There was nothing more to do."

UNH director of athletics Marty Scarano raves about the work Dana, who arrived at UNH in 1984, does with the department's teams and student-athletes, and also about the volunteering he has done with not only the Marathon, but with the US canoe and kayak team at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and other national teams through the years.

"His volunteer work with the Marathon is phenomenal," Scarano said. "I consider him a hero given the part he played when the bombings took place. Typical Jon, he downplays it, but I think in every aspect he's a hero with how he helped doing triage and what he could during one of the worst days in American history in many regards."

Not that Dana's work that day surprised Scarano.

"I feel blessed as an athletics director to have had Jon with me my whole time at UNH and obviously his career here has been much longer than that," said Scarano, who announced in November that he is retiring after this year. "You couldn't have asked for a better Director of Sports Medicine than Jon. Period.

"He's a consummate professional, but most of all what I respect about Jon is his deep, deep concern for all the student athletes at UNH," Scarano added. "I rest assured every day that they're in great hands with Jon and his staff. In addition, I seek his counsel on a lot of issues within the department. I think anyone who understands how an athletic department works, knows the athletic trainers are out front in dealing with student athletes and none is better at it than Jon."

'Nobody Hits the Ground'

Jon Dana and longtime friend and colleague Chris Troyanos, the Medical Coordinator of the Marathon.

Jon Dana and Chris Troyanos, the Medical Coordinator of the Marathon, go way, way back.

They were both student athletic trainers at Northeastern University and were urged by their mentor and professor, Kerkor Kassabian, to go to the marathon, Troyanos a year ahead of Dana.

"I was from New York and didn't even know about the Boston Marathon and the professor said show up at this time and this place," Dana said. "When KoKo says you do it, you did it, no questions asked."

He's been showing up in Boston on Patriots Day ever since.

Troyanos went on to leadership roles in the event and Dana has been one of his right-hand people every step of the way.

"Jon has helped stabilize the finish line to the point I've never had to worry about it," Troyanos said. "He's led a team, with others, that is maybe 45-50 strong of all athletic trainers, student athletic trainers and a couple of Docs and they manage that space so well. There are intricate details with pro athletes, the photographers with their camera angles and everything going on. It's not easy."

Then come the bulk of the runners, some 25,000 strong these days, compared to the 2,500 to 3,000 when Troyanos and Dana first started in the 1970s.

"You've got masses of people coming across the line in all types of different weather," Troyanos said. "They have a motto down there: 'Nobody hits the ground' and are very aggressive about it. None of my runners faceplants anywhere in that area. They've been there long enough that they can look down Boylston Street and know who is going to be a problem before they get there. That's how good they are. They know who they have to stay close to and they know how to ask the right questions and who they need to get into the medical tent."

All the experience and know-how paid off eight years ago in the aftermath of the bombings, Troyanos noted.

"It was never more evident than in 2013," he said. "They were among the early first responders and helped in a variety of ways packaging people out of there in the most unusual methods. It's what was given to us and we reacted and history will bear out that we did a good job. That only three people died, I think, says something given the magnitude of the tragedy."

Inspirations

Jon Dana and Chris Troyanos are best of friends and a good part of the reason Dana still treks down to Boston for the Marathon each April is to help his buddy out. He also likes seeing and working with folks in his profession he only gets to see once a year at the finish line.

It's also an opportunity to work a major athletic event and Dana and Troyanos take great pride in introducing student athletic trainers from across the country to a world-class, international event as well.

"It's ebbed and flowed some as far as UNH," Dana said. "Some years we've had 10 go down, others we've had a couple."

This year there were about 10 and three were at the finish line with Dana and others were out on the course.

"It's an opportunity for them to see an amazing event and how it works," Dana said. "You never know what is going to inspire the students down the road, what may get them interested in international sports medicine, or big event medicine or marathon sports medicine. You can't pick and choose when they're going to learn something. But I can say it's almost universal that every student that has gone down with me has been very happy they went and loved the opportunity."

For Dana, there are always those moments he gets to share with the finishing runners.

"You truly appreciate what they've accomplished," he said "They may cry, they may be jumping up and down because they finished. You can watch it over and over. It's a rare opportunity and it is inspirational. When you leave that day, you're going to do x, y or z better. . . . You never know what the story is going to be, what they've overcome, what they've been through to get there. Those are the people that make this worth doing."

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