Fun Run?

What do you do for fun when your in the Army and the Navy is having a birthday while deployed to a foreign country? You get together with about 500 of your newest best friends and you get up at 0430 on a Saturday so you can run a 5K! Yeah baby, thats livin the dream.

I realize that this does not seem like a fun idea, except to the dedicated few runners I know. It wasn't really the sort of thing I'd do on a regular basis on a Saturday morning. While it is true I have been known to be found running at 0430 on a Saturday morning that was more likely running FROM somebody than for another reason. I will say that seeing 0430 after waking up is a much different experience than seeing it just before you go to sleep. Ahhh how I miss Korea. But I digress...

So I get up and Jeff, my roommate and I join several hundred of our fellow Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors and Marines in front of the gym. We wait for Reveille and then the start gun. Which here is a horn, for obvious reasons. Off we trot on our 5K run. I do mean trot. We ran around the camp and I came in at about 28 minutes. A little better than my self imposed 10 minute mile pace. There were no prizes as this was a "Fun Run" but they did hand out t-shirts. Jeff and I are modeling the newest in Navy birthday fashion. Pretty stylish, and not bad for free.

The run was not the high point of this day. Not that I expected it to be, but I got some great surprises. I finally found the "panel" we did last time I was here. I was deployed to Kuwait in 1999 in a mush more austere environment. We lived out in tents in the desert and were her for Operation Desert Spring. We were a continuing presence left here in Kuwait after Desert Storm. Every rotation would get a sheet of plywood and paint a commemorative panel. When the rotation was over the panel was hung in a sort of "canteen" on the base that used to be known as Camp Doha. Camp Doha closed and they moved every thing to Camp Arifjan a while back. The panels were put up in different Gyms, and Canteens on Camp Arifjan because they would not all fit in one place. The run started at a different gym than the one I usually go to, so I had not seen our panel. It was cool to see it hanging up there.

I got another surprise when one of my former soldiers from Pennsylvania walked by and pushed my shoulder with a "Hey, Sir!" That was pretty cool, it's always nice to see old friends. I also found out that another of my soldiers who retired from my unit in PA was here as well as a contractor. This now brings the total up to 5 soldiers I have run into that I know, by name. There are about a dozen or so more that I know I served with but either were not actually in my unit or part of my organization but I sort of recognized. Those meetings are funny. They kinda go like this: You start talking to somebody or you have to go to another office for this or that and after a few minutes of lookin kinda funny at one another somebody days "...don't I know you? Yeah I think so, where you been. Ever been to Hood? Stewart? How about Korea? Well in 19xx I was xxx. in yyyy I was at blah blah blah." That goes on back and forth until bam! "Oh yeah yeah that was it. Hey man how are you? Hey you remember blah blahblah..."

So that was my Saturday. Not to bad. quick 5K for PT. Free T-shirt. Stroll down memory lane. Heck I even had a short work day, only 10 hours!