Few things say spring has sprung in Boston like Marathon Monday.

This year, the annual Boston Marathon on April 17 carries added significance as the city marks 10 years since two young men detonated makeshift bombs near the finish line on April 15, 2013. The explosions killed three people and seemingly ripped a hole in the social fabric of the city.

Monitor illustrator Karen Norris was running her first marathon that day and was abruptly stopped from completing the race. The turmoil that surrounded the bombings left Karen, like many Bostonians, “in a dark place.”

At the same time, she was buoyed by the support she found, particularly from fellow runners. And before long she committed to trying again the following year. 

“We can’t live in fear,” she says. “You fall off your bike, you get back on it.”

So in 2014 she plodded across the state once more and achieved the belated triumph of crossing the finish line. Along the way she was reminded of what had drawn her to the marathon in the first place: “I felt like I was a part of something much bigger than myself.”

A decade later, memories of the day still weigh heavily, and yet, “There’s been so much progress and healing and camaraderie,” she says. “I feel like we gained a new perspective – on ourselves personally and as a city.”