Day 234: Shamrock Shuffle

I'm not a big St. Patrick's Day which apparently is a big beer drinking Irish holiday according to my fellow military members. I also recall in grade school that if you are not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day, you deserve to get hit. Other than that, I know nothing else about this notable day. Out here in Afghanistan, in celebration of this Irish tradition some proactive folks planned a 5K race right on the base. The race reminded me of Guam as 5K races are going on all the time!


It was a beautiful early morning, prime weather conditions for running. Here is a group of us Navy and Air Force folks ready to run...we're almost awake!

You gotta have the token pre-race group picture.
Love the Irish touch!

I live on a base within a base. Imagine a postage stamp on an envelope. Camp Clark (my base) is the stamp and the outer edges of the envelope is Camp Parsa (the Afghan Army base). A little over 1 full lap around the Afghan wall of the base is 5K. I remember running this course when I first arrived which also was the last time I ran it as I heard rumors of snipers hiding in the mountains. Well, I wasn't going to let that rumor stop me from enjoying this event.

I'm not much of a runner, but I have been doing it more and more as I have had lots of time to workout since being on this deployment. Although I'm not a Speedy Gonzalez, I'm still a big competitor so I wanted to see how I compared to the other Camp Clark runners.

Here I am huffing and puffing my way to the finish line!

I finished the race in 24 minutes flat which isn't too bad. I was fourth overall and what do you know...FIRST in my age group! I was very surprised. As you can see in the picture below, my 5K keepsake was a smaller replica of the Afghanistan national flag. Our complimentary T-shirts are still in the mail.


I must say that I had a blast. For those few hours of the race, I felt a sense of normalcy and contentment that I haven't felt in a long long time. It's thoughtful events like this one that keep us troops closer to home.

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us."
Hebrews 12:1 NIV