Bon Voyage 4-miler

A week ago, I got up at 4:30 AM, worked for half an hour, then ran 4 miles. What could possibly have compelled me to get up that early on a Sunday, when we don't have a hard shift change and I can be a few minutes later than normal? Yes, you guessed it: a free T-shirt!

1LT Michael Olsen organized the "Bon Voyage 4-miler" footrace as a last hurrah for our unit in the Camp Victory footrace sub-culture. It was a surprisingly well planned and well run race - not surprising because I expected any less of Michael, but because everything seemed to work behind the scenes and it all seemed effortless for him to execute and organize it. He and his crew of 30 volunteers (me among them) pulled it off and kept our flag from being dragged from the flagpole in front of our building by a disgruntled mob of hungry/thirsty/T-shirtless/etc runners. The T-shirts were also quite well done, sporting a simple design and a good background color. I won't mind wearing this one around!

My time was a few seconds over 27 minutes, which puts me in the 6:45/mile range - not too bad, but considering all the time I had to improve my run times, I should be running like 5 minute miles by now. I guess I should just accept it and embrace my inner Cinnabon.

Without further ado, the pictures:

Yep, that's me in the picture, running the last footrace we will get to run in Iraq!


... and this is me with my roommate Bob, the proud owners of free T-shirts. Bob didn't have to run to get his, he just volunteered to register people before the race and hand out XL T-shirts at the end. I realized too late that all this time I could have been volunteering to help for the races and still getting the T-shirts!! Oh well, at least I burned off some Cinnabon.


Here's the newest addition to the collection, front and back: