ESPN had the pros out yesterday to cover what now is the biggest sports story of the year. Unfortunately

Jeremy Schaap, Bob Ley, Karl Ravech, Steve Levy were among those navigating ESPN through the unthinkable tragedy in Boston. Journalists are journalists, whether it is covering who wins the race or the minutes after a senseless bombing. ESPN’s journalists stepped up yesterday.

Perhaps none more so than Bonnie Ford. My former teammate at the Chicago Tribune (her byline was Bonnie DeSimone back then) was wrapping up her stories about the race from the media center in the Fairmont Copley Hotel. In the immediate aftermath of the blast, Ford was on the air with Schaap, lending her perspective and talking about her frustration at not being allowed to go outside to cover what had just transpired outside of the hotel’s lobby.

Ford wrote about her experience in a column at ESPN.com.

She opened:

I could lie and say I heard and felt the explosions that will mark Boston and its famous road race and all of us who were here, or watching from elsewhere, forever. But I didn’t. I had my noise-canceling headphones on and I was focused on finishing a story about Shalane Flanagan, who was disappointed she hadn’t been able to deliver the race of her life for her hometown fans.

The writers closest to me said they felt a shiver and heard a sound that seemed, oddly, like thunder rumbling. That made no sense, because it was a sunny day.

In a few moments, nothing made sense.

Her encounter with Joan Benoit:

I sprinted into the lobby, and the first person I encountered was the great American champion Joan Benoit, who stood against a wall with her husband and two kids, sipping a hot beverage and looking gray-faced but composed. “I’d be a lot jumpier if I didn’t have my family with me,” she said. She didn’t want to say much else. “It’s a tragedy, and a shame they picked this event to exploit,” she said with quiet anger.

On conflicting feelings:

Part of me is relieved I wasn’t on the finish line to see the chaos and carnage Monday afternoon, and part of me wishes I had been, because I’m a reporter and my instinct is to convey the most powerful images and messages possible.

Wandering around the lobby again, I found Jason Hartmann, who had finished a game fourth in the men’s elite race for the second year in a row. He looked slightly dazed. Like me, he’d been unaware of what happened until he got a text asking whether he was safe. When he saw the first video footage, he turned to his girlfriend, Angelina Ramos, and said, “Our entire sport is going to change.”

It will in some ways. Public safety officials from the municipal to the federal — and international — level will caucus with race organizers and make adjustments, just as we always do after being attacked.

Ford concludes:

I am stricken by the reversal of that image here in Boston, the fact that people were running away from something terrible seconds after running toward something good. But I also know that will turn again.

Amateur marathoners push themselves for a whole host of reasons. To test their physical and psychological limits. To raise money for worthy causes. To compete. The next time this — or any — marathon is run anywhere in the world, they will run for yet another. To show that the power of communal achievement can be beaten on one day, but not on most days and never indefinitely. And that is what makes sense on a senseless day.

A powerful piece.