NATCHEZ — Call it divine intervention or a gut feeling, but whatever kept Natchezian Jennifer Mire from running in the Boston Marathon this week may have saved her life.

Mire has run the marathon several times and was set to go to Boston for Monday’s race but decided against it just a week and a half ago.

“I just had this weird feeling,” she said. “I was feeling some resistance, and it was a little too difficult to get it all together to go.”

So Mire stayed home, and she was driving in her car Monday when she heard on the radio that a pair of bombs exploded at the marathon’s finish line, killing three people and wounding more than 170.

“I’ve been there, and I’ve run that race, and I know exactly where that finish line is … and just really and truly I could not believe that would happen at the Boston Marathon,” she said.

The bombing claimed the lives of Krystle Campbell, 29, of Arlington, Mass., an unnamed Boston University grad student and 8-year-old Martin Richard of Dorchester, Mass.

Mire said she usually brings her family to cheer her on at the race, her biggest fans being her 14-year-old, 11-year-old and 8-year-old children.

“When I hear about the death of an 8-year-old-boy, and his father is running the race, that’s what hits home for me,” she said.

“It could have been anybody … I just think sometimes you get a little divine intervention,” she said. “There’s a reason I (wasn’t) there.”

The Boston Marathon is always in the back of Mire’s head when she runs, she said.

“Every time I run I’m running to make my qualifying time to go to Boston again,” Mire said.

Monday’s horrific tragedy won’t keep Mire from returning to Boston for the next marathon, she said.

“After you see that happen, you almost think, ‘I would never go back to that race,’ but really I feel like it’s just the opposite,” Mire said. “I feel like I want now to re-qualify and run the race again just to support all those people.”