Locals reflect on NYC Marathon

It has been a difficult 12 months for the marathon world. Last year, Superstorm Sandy prompted the cancellation of the ING New York City Marathon. In April, two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and wounding over 260.A week ago last Sunday, though, runners had reason to cheer when the New York City Marathon returned to the five boroughs. Among the 50,000-plus people who toed the starting line were several from the North Shore.?Security was extremely tight,” said Marblehead resident Dr. Jurriaan Peters, 38, a child neurologist at Children?s Hospital who finished in 3:36:36. “There was no way you could jump in without a starting number.?We also ran with ribbons to honor Boston. I had ?Boston? across my chest, and some were screaming, ?Go, Boston!? You could clearly sense that runners were not planning on backing down, not letting any nasty event take away from running events.”Peter Pedro, 46, of Lynn ran with his friend Lori Baronian of Rhode Island. Baronian had “Boston Strong” on her shirt.?That got more applause than anyone who ran,” said Pedro, whose father is the Lynn sports legend of the same name.The younger Pedro works in a Boston office of Marsh and McLennan, an insurance broker and risk advisor.?My office was down the street from the bombings,” Pedro recalled. “It?s on Boylston Street, two blocks from the finish line. To see it the week following, to live around it several weeks afterward, was a bit surreal.”Pedro was among those slated to run in the NYC Marathon last year.?Last year, obviously, the race was cancelled,” he said. “They gave us all the option to pick any race the next three years.”The NYC veteran — “I?ve done it a bunch of times,” he said — opted for this year, and finished in 4:42.46. Near the finish line, he recalled, was “a blue line painted across, a Boston Line.”The heightened security affected Dr. Peters? attempt to spotlight his fundraising to combat epilepsy. He wanted to run with an electroencephalograph, or EEG, a device that uses electrodes to detect signals from the brain. However, the organizers of the race did not allow this.One reason, he wrote on his fundraising page, was that “they were worried security along the way would pull me over many times, and perhaps it would even spark some concern among fellow runners. Given what happened in Boston in May 2013, I completely understand — it?s just too bad!”Dr. Peters did exceed his fundraising goal of $3,000, raising $5,490, according to his fundraising page, http://howtohelp.childrenshospital.org/newyork/page/Jurriaan-Peters.htmHe trained with a partner, Josh Elston, an Air Force major whose son Caleb is one of Dr. Peters? patients. Caleb Elston suffers from Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC), which Dr. Peters described on his fundraising page as “a genetic disorder associated with epilepsy, developmental delay and autism.”Both Pedro and Dr. Peters discussed the role their community plays in their lives.?I?m still in Lynn and very happy to be here,” said Pedro, a 1985 Classical graduate, who called his father “an even better guy than an athlete.”He started thinking about marathons after a friend and fellow Lynner, Darren Langis, spotted a Runner?s World article claiming that “anyone who follows this training program can run a marathon,” Pedro recalled. “He picked it up and said, ?We?re anyone.?” Pedro has run Boston and Chicago in addition to New York.?My family stays home,” he said of New York. “I?ve got young kids. My wife has gone down twice.”Dr. Peters has lived in Marblehead since 2008. He is originally from Leyden in the Netherlands, coming to the US in 2006. He is married with three children.?I?ve done sports all my life,” Dr. Peters said.He started running in the summer of 2011. His first marathon was last year in Lowell. He trained for New York “mainly in Marblehead, Swampscott and Lynn,” he said. “From Marblehead to the coast, I?d follow to Nahant and back. It?s 15 kilometers.”It has been a rough 12 months,