It was a mirror race, but under much more stressful conditions.
One of the new additions to the ARA-Moe’s Better Half Marathon this year was that 25 Army soldiers over in Afghanistan were running the 13.1-mile distance around an air field where they are stationed on the same day as our race, even though they are 10 hours ahead of us.
Several weeks before the race, I was contacted by Capt. Phil Johnson with the idea of running a mirror run over there. Some of the men had run the Austin Marathon a couple of weeks before, and he said that he would see if he could get any interest in the half marathon here in San Marcos. On the day of the race, he had 25 soldiers, including himself, signed up to run.
The runners are stationed in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, which is a medium-sized and a very, very old city. The airfield can be “Googled” if you zoom in on Kabul and look 80 miles east of Jalalabad.
To do the half-marathon distance, the runners had to run around the airfield just short of four times.
While we battled cold and wind that day, Capt. Johnston and the crew took off around the airfield.
Phil “Snag” Johnston said that about five minutes into the run, a vehicle-borne bomb went off just on the other side of the airfield.
Luckily, he says it was early in the race and they were not all spread out, and the bomb went off outside the wire. Whether that bomb was close or not, I think I will take wind and cold as a hazard, rather than the prospect of a bomb landing near anytime during the race.
Capt. Johnston is the Air Liaison officer there, and is the guy who makes sure the Army and Air Force are speaking the same language. He is also a pilot by trade and flies the F-16, but is the liaison officer at present.
The Army runners and their times included: 1st Lt. Stephen DeLuna in a fast 1:40:30 time (slowed a bit by the bomb threat); Capt. Phil Johnston, 1:48:10; Spc. Andrew Lahr, 1:49:19; 1st Lt. James Barker, 1:51:32; 1st Lt. Stephen Klenke, 1:54:02; TF Med Charles Lovato, 1:54:16; SFC Jeffrey Wood, 1:55:13 and 1st Sgt. Monty Lash, 1:56:55.
Sgt. Patrick Harris ran in at 2:00:15, followed by Maj. Geordinno Bagaporo, 2:03:46; Spc. Bryan Eagon, 2:05:28; Mr. Allen Umolo, 2:06:31; SFC William Hornbeck, 2:06:32; Spc. Jason Southers, 2:11:18 and Lt. Kenneth Engberg, 2:11:57. CW3 Gary Parsons ran in at 2:12:06; Maj. Skip Masterson, 2:29:59; Ssg. Jeffrey Rees in 2:29:59 and SFC Timothy Murray in 2:42:40.
Several of the runners had to take care of the bomb threat and finished up their run the next day, including Maj. Patti Glen, Mr.
Richard Mangongo, CW1 Lester Charles and Mr. Eric Nicely.
TSSgt. Jerry Millard was there to act as race director and get the times for the runners.
Considering the circumstances and things, the times for those runners were good. The shirts for the runners, the mugs and pens and a few “goodies” are all packed and will be shipped overseas this week so that they can enjoy being part of the race.
I also included some photos of our race so that they can see who they ran against, as well as the hill the runners talk about in the race. It was a real privilege to have those defending our country to take part in our race, and we hope that we are able to do it again.
I missed mentioning Lolly Williamson and Elisa Garrett last week as local runners that ran the half marathon. The results listed most everyone from this area as being from Austin and I overlooked them; but when I printed out the pictures I saw them smiling, so they must have done well.
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