Two Kalispell runners had finished the Boston Marathon and were safely out of the area before bombs exploded Monday at the finish line of the famous race.

Jill Hinrichs, 46, had crossed the finish line about 20 minutes before two bombs exploded there.

“She’s OK, she’s been posting on Facebook,” said Maura O’Halloran, the general manager at Scotty’s Bar and Grill, where Hinrichs has worked for more than six years as a waitress and bartender.

Richard Briles, 58, of Kalispell had completed the 26.2-mile race in 3 hours, 19 minutes and had left the finish area before the explosions at the four-hour mark of the marathon.

“Last year when it was 90 degrees I ran about a half-hour slower. I probably would’ve been in the middle of it,” Briles told the Inter Lake by cellphone Monday afternoon.

“This year, I was completely out of it and back at the motel. Actually, people started texting me, ‘Are you OK?”

Briles did not hear the explosions from his hotel.

“I didn’t hear anything,” he said. “Somebody texted, ‘Did you see the explosions?’ I thought, is this the wrong text?

“My kids and colleagues and everybody started texting me after that. Then I turned on the TV and started watching what everybody else has been watching. In the lobby of the motel there’s 40 or 50 people watching. It’s solemn.”

Briles, an emergency-room doctor for Silvertip Emergency Physicians at Kalispell Regional Medical Center, offered to help treat the injured but was told there was enough medical staff available since there are three hospitals in the area.

“I felt bad, because if I would’ve been there, I probably could’ve helped. But they’ve got a lot of medical people. This is like the World Series of running. The medical tent is right in harm’s way where the bomb went off.”

O’Halloran said Hinrichs sent her a text message saying she was safe at the hotel where she’s staying with fellow runners.

“They’re kind of under lockdown, it sounds like,” O’Halloran said.

It was the second year Hinrichs completed the Boston Marathon.

“She runs all the time,” O’Halloran said. “She was really excited about going.”

Hinrichs’ Facebook page shows a photo of her posing at the finish line in Boston prior to the race, along with a photo of her special green-and-yellow Boston Marathon running shoes and an inspirational poster at the race.

O’Halloran said she doesn’t think Hinrichs has any immediate family members living in the Kalispell area.

“We’re her family,” she said.

For Briles, Monday’s race was his fourth Boston Marathon.

“You feel like it’s the safest place in the world,” he said of the marathon course.

“There’s no cars on the road. You worry about maybe having a heart attack, but you certainly don’t think that anything like this would ever happen in a venue like this.”