Misty White Dion stumbles in return to Boston Marathon

Misty White Dion’s return to the Boston Marathon didn’t go quite as planned Monday.

In her first Boston race since being hit by a car as a pedestrian while crossing U.S. 17 in October 2013, the 40-year-old Myrtle Beach resident was accidentally tripped by another runner and was unable to finish the race.

Dion, who ran in her first Boston Marathon in 2013, said she was upended around mile 7 and suffered a sprained Achilles tendon, then continued for another six miles before deciding it was not in her best interest to continue and risk exacerbating the injury.

“It’s one of those things that could happen to anybody,” Dion said. “It was definitely disappointing. I thought I was going to be okay for a few miles, but it ended up being too much. I decided I would live to train another day rather than go six months without being able to train again.”

Dion was one of seven members of the Grand Strand Running Club who competed in Monday’s race, and her husband, Ryan Dion, was the only one who finished in a time that qualifies him to return for the 2017 race.

His time of 3:14:23 is inside the qualifying time for his male age division by 37 seconds, though he’ll likely need to improve upon his time by 2 or 3 minutes to run next year, as he said 4,000 runners were shut out of the race this year who had hit qualifying marks. He plans to run in the Lehigh Valley (Pa.) marathon in September in an attempt to improve upon his time.

Misty Dion is one of four Grand Strand Running Club members who ran Monday and had already hit qualifying marks for the 2017 Boston Marathon. The others are Frank Pepp, George Redman and Diego Sosa.

“I know there’s always next year, and that will be here before we know it and we’ll be doing this all over again,” Misty Dion said.

This story was originally published April 19, 2016 at 9:55 PM with the headline "Misty White Dion stumbles in return to Boston Marathon."