iThink:
Axis of Awesome, "Four Chord Song"
Above and Beyond feat. Oceanlab, "On A Good Day" (Daniel Kandi remix)
Survivor, "Eye of the Tiger"
WX at 0800: 70.0 (21.1) DP 64.9 (18.3) BP 29.93 (1013) SSE 8 RH 84
Odometer 11A: 331.6mi
Z3 warmup, Z4 high race, Z3 return. Average/max heart rate = 160/185
Today was a free road race, billed as 3 miles or 5k, although the distance itself wasn't that important. Today was Fort Leavenworth's contribution to the Run for the Fallen, a memorial run series to memorialize American servicemembers killed in action in Operations IRAQI FREEDOM, ENDURING FREEDOM, and while the literature doesn't say it, NEW DAWN as well.
The Survivor song was playing at the start of the race portion. That's an old standby of many a formation run at Fort Bragg, but unfortunately, my attempts to dislodge that earwig were totally unsuccessful, and I ran the entire 3.3mi of the race with Survivor in the back of my head.
I have to admit this was faster than I expected. I was running an out and back course that had a brief uphill start, and then went mostly downhill out, which might explain why I was holding down under 8:00/mi the first mile, and running all positive splits afterwards. I did have a finish, but I was kicking to finish at full speed at the end - which might explain the substantially increased speed (6:03/mi) at the end.
I can take tomorrow off - and probably should after three days of over 5 each, the last done generally as a time trial.
For the record, I memorialized MAJ Brian Mescall and SFC Gary Vasquez. Of the 187 men and women who died in the execution of the last campaign plan I wrote, they were the two most personal names on that list to me.
Brian was the deputy commander of TF ZABUL, out of FOB Lagman, Zabul Province, Afghanistan when he was killed by an IED in January 2009. I had talked at length with him on a secure phone a few weeks prior to that about some things that were relevant to his unit and how they related to the execution of operational art and strategy for CJTF-101, since he was representing a generally independent unit under Romanian command. I very much would have liked to have met him in person. He was killed before I had that chance.
Gary was one of my former soldiers when I commanded a cavalry troop in the 82d Airborne Division. He had gone on to Special Forces, but I remember Gary as the guy we sent to Ranger School and didn't see for another 6 months because he would not quit. He eventually graduated with the tab he so richly deserved. He was killed on a combat recce patrol in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in late September 2008.
To quote my friend Rico Alvarez, "Asi como nos recordamos cada ano, no son muertos. Viven en nos memoria." My Spanish isn't very good, but Google Translate says something along the lines of "So as we remember each year, they are not dead. They live in our memory."
So say we all.
Warmup (2.0mi@18:12)
SGMT AGGRG SEGMT PERMI AVGPC DIST
1.00 09:07 09:07 09:07 09:07 1.00
1.00 18:12 09:05 09:05 09:06 2.00
Race (3.3mi@26:27)
1.00 26:03 07:51 07:51 08:41 3.00
1.00 34:03 08:00 08:00 08:31 4.00
1.00 42:24 08:21 08:21 08:29 5.00
0.30 44:39 02:15 07:30 08:25 5.30
Return (0.47mi@4:32)
0.47 49:11 04:32 09:39 08:31 5.77
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