ON AUGUST 12, 2012, Maureen Lampa, a 61-year-old retired teacher, her daughter, and her daughter’s friend all piled into Lampa’s Chrysler convertible for the three-hour drive from their home in Westminster, Massachusetts, to Freeport, Maine.
In May, the women had signed up for a race called the Freeport Half Marathon, and they’d spent four months running five to ten miles a day, five days a week, to prepare. This would be Lampa’s fifth half marathon. For her daughter, Katherine, and her daughter’s friend Lauren Laserte, both 21, it was their first.
On August 13, after spending the night in a nearby hotel, the group pulled into downtown Freeport an hour before the race’s scheduled 7 A.M. start time. But when they arrived, there was no sign of a race. No…