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When two bombs went off at the Boston Marathon yesterday afternoon, the Washington Post had already had a reporter on the scene: local editor Vernon Loeb, who had just finished running the marathon himself. Within minutes of the explosions, Loeb had already sent an email about the blasts to Executive Editor Marty Baron, he said today on WAMU’s The Kojo Nnamdi Show .
Despite just running more than 26 miles, Loeb was able to produce a story on the bombings with another Post reporter. Loeb said that rather than making him tired, completing the marathon had given him energy. “It really wasn’t any kind of great physical or journalistic feat,” he told host Kojo Nnamdi.
Loeb, who was previously in the public eye as David Petraeus mistress Paula Broadwell‘s co-writer, estimated that he was two or three blocks away from the bombs when they went off. Although Loeb couldn’t make phone calls because of cellular network problems around the bomb site, he was able to get the story out by sending emails on his iPhone. “If you’re a journalist and you hear bombs go off, no matter how tired you are I think you need to kind of spring into action,” he said.
Also on WAMU, Metro Transit Police Chief Ronald Pavlik said heightened Metro security will continue on the system today.