Like many other runners, this week I have been running with Boston on my mind.

Running is a lonely sport, and we runners prefer it that way. Not only is running free and convenient, but you don’t have to make small talk with the sweaty guy on the exercise bike next to you at the gym or the bendy, tattooed woman on the adjacent yoga mat. If we have running partners, they are quite carefully selected, but for the most part, running is solitary, and that’s just fine with us.

But the isolation of running is what makes race day all the more powerful. On race day, the lonely runner can run in a group, chat with other runners,and even share her obsessive, all-encompassing sport with the people who love her, as they stand on the sidelines or at the finish line.

I know there is no hierarchy for senseless acts of violence. They are each awful in there own right, but this one struck a different chord. I am angry that such a happy, democratic venue has been sullied by violence, and by the fact that many of the victims of the attack are runners who may never walk again.

As with many of these tragic events, it was in talking to my kids that I was able to make sense of it myself: Keep your eye on the helpers, keep your eye on all the people who swoop into the blast to rescue strangers, keep  your eye on all the people who offer their homes and beds to people stranded, far from home.

In short, keep your eye on the good. And keep running.