5.25mi, 54:45, 1 November 2005, Camp Buehring KU

Kitchens of Distinction, "Smiling"
Juliana Hatfield, “Perfection”

Odometer 3: 278.0mi

Z3 high.

First run in the Kuwaiti Desert in over eight years. I might be a lot older, but I remember it like yesterday.

One of the notable things about being here is that the surface underlying the sand is mostly rock. There are some paved streets in the camp where I’m staging, but a lot of dirt roads. The air is, as to be expected, dry. I found that out the hard way when I was walking around yesterday feeling the heat and most notable, the 20-25mph wind that started drying my skin out.

Today started slow, about 9 minute pace, and by the end, I was averaging 8 minutes. Two contributors, perhaps: drinking a liter of Gatorade and eating a Hooah! Bar before starting. I won’t be doing that for the next one, though. I was burping up fruit punch and apple-cinnamon all the first half the run. Yay.

Some other songs that stick in my mind as I walk around:
- Cyndi Lauper, “True Colors.” I’m not sure why on this one, although I always really, really, really liked the lead guitar leitmotif on this song.
- Sonny Rhodes, Theme song to Firefly. Two reasons principally: I’m in a desert and the last movie I saw before deployment was Serenity. And yet, what the song says is an amazingly powerful message. “Burn the land and boil the sea, you can’t take the sky from me.”