Top Gun

Sometimes your best runs don’t go according to plan. In early January, I was scheduled to run 13 miles at an 8:30 pace. In addition to our club starting from Old Plank Trail in Frankfort, a group of triathlete friends were also coming out. Luckily, the ice on the path had melted.

I checked my email, and one of the Park Forest Running Club members told me there was an out-of-town guy from the Navy who wanted to run 15 miles at my pace. I had already arranged with the tri-club guys to start at 7:30, so I called him and told him we would meet him at 8 am.

Bill and I ran about 2 miles out with the tri-club, and turned around. As we got close to our start, we saw 10-15 Park Forest runners, and they tell me that the Navy guy – “Pat”, is waiting at the parking lot.
We head out again, and Bill joins Pat and me, and soon we are running a sub-8 minute pace. Pat is an active duty career military guy. His wife’s family lives in the area, and he had met some of our group out running, and struck up a conversation. He had a 15 mile run planned and wanted company. After a couple of miles, Bill doubles back to the parking lot.

Pat started running in 2001. He qualified for Boston with a 2:55 in the Marine Corps marathon. In Boston he had stomach problems, and ONLY finished in 3:25. He did some triathlons, and ultramarathons, but recently had gotten away from marathons. The revival of the Pittsburgh marathon had attracted him to his hometown, so he was starting to train for it. Since he will see some hills in Pittsburgh, I decide to detour from the flat Old Plank trail to the modest hills in the path that branches over the bridge north of Route 30.

As we ran, we talked about his career plans. He is a few years away from retirement. Trained as a surgical tech, he now recruits medical personnel. He is considering going to school for his nursing degree when he retires from the military. I told him about my wife’s career as nurse/nurse practitioner, and that he would be great as a Physicians’ Assistant in an ER. (After doing IVs in a Hum-Vee under fire, he could handle an ER.)
Selling recruits on the military can be a tough; some people have mixed feelings; they support the military and its mission, but fear the commitment and the danger. One of his selling points is how his career has brought him all around the world, with experiences such as seeing the Pope celebrate midnight mass at the Vatican.

On one tour, he had visited a concentration camp in Germany, and shortly afterwards, he was working in a military hospital, treating an elderly civilian cancer patient. He noticed that this woman had a concentration camp tattoo on her arm. That really hit home for him. I pointed out that it was the US military that liberated the concentration camps, and that pretty much validates the mission of the US military right now. I tell him about my nephew stationed on a submarine. Initially, my sister dreaded the choice her son had made. I have to say, a couple of years into his stint, it has really matured the young man.

I told him about my family, my running career, and my upcoming visit to Boston in April. As we finish 10 miles, our pace has been right around 8 minutes. I have hit my 13 miles, so Pat and I part ways at the parking lot, and he carries on to run 4 more by himself.

You can learn a lot about someone in a long run, even if you don’t learn their last name. Pat and I may never meet again, but I hope the welcome he got from our club helped him in his training. I pray that some of the honor, dedication and resolve that I sense the Navy brought out in Pat, gets ingrained in my nephew. And I hope that I can carry some that spirit with me running in Boston.