Local runner returns: Colleen Dabler

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- An Osceola woman who ran the Boston Marathon Monday returned to South Bend early Tuesday morning with three other women. They are all glad to be back home.

The women left Boston Monday around 9 p.m. and arrived home to South Bend around 3 a.m.

Colleen Dabler of Osceola is having a very hard time dealing with what happened.

Dabler, a mother of three, took time off from running marathons so she could have a family. Last year she qualified for the Boston Marathon when she ran the Sunburst.

She came in at 3 hours 17 minutes, one of her best times ever.

She had just met up with her aunt and uncle who live in Boston in the family section when the bombs went off.

"And then we heard this explosion and I remember like looking at my aunt and we were wondering-- what is that? And you couldn't even fathom that it was a bomb going off and knowing that there were so many runners still out there on the course and I was scared. And I didn't know where my running partners were,” said Dabler.

Dabler says she felt the vibration of the explosions.