Inaugural Clarksville Half Marathon Kandahar Shadow Race

I now have my fourth race in as many months under my belt, and today's was a good one! This time it was a shadow of the Clarksville (TN) Half Marathon. Clarksville is near Fort Campbell, KY (which actually straddles the KY/TN border), and someone deployed from there arranged for the shadow of the Clarksville race (story here.) Our finish times here will be recorded along with the runners in Clarksville, which is pretty cool. Anyway, back to the race... When I started training for PF Chang, I was hoping to finish the half in about 2 hours. Thanks to the ample training time here, I was able to finish today's race in 1:47:47! The bad news is that the Garmin has once again betrayed me, and let me know that the actual course distance was only 12.83 miles. I really need to stop wearing that thing for races and just accept that the course is measured accurately and that my finish time is whatever they say it is. Since I did wear it, I hate the thought of recording a 12.83 mile race, but I would feel dishonest recording my time as a half-marathon. I decided that the lesser of two lies would be to use the finish time calculator and record a time of 1:50:03 for 13.1 miles in my running log. The Garmin did give me some good news--my 10 mile split time was a full 4 minutes faster than my time for the Army 10 Miler just a month ago. I didn't expect to come this far this fast. I just hope I can keep it up when I get home. I'm definitely going to take advantage of this opportunity and start training for the full marathon. Good luck to everyone in your training, and I'll see you all in January--Steve

Another race, another milestone...

I ran yet another race this morning. It was kind of short notice, and I didn't even register for it until this week. The Dutch hosted a 5k / 10k / 10 miler, and I decided to do the 10k since I had never raced that distance, plus I wanted to save myself for the half marathon coming up on November 7th. I didn't train specifically for it, and just ran it inline with my half marathon training. Today was supposed to be my long run anyway. I wasn't sure what pace I should be running at this distance, so I guessed at 7:40. I did pretty well and managed to maintain a 7:45 average. I finished with an official time of 47:20, but this time the Garmin said the course was short by .18 km. I used the Finish Time Calculator at the Runner's World website to estimate my finish time for the full 10k, and it said I would have done it in 48:11. Either way, that's way better than my 10k split time of 53:49 from the Army 10 miler at the beginning of the month. By the way, the main selling point for this one was "All asphalt, no dust". The only problem is that there aren't 10 km of paved roads on this base, so the course ended up being a somewhat goofy four legged out-and-back kind of thing. Not my favorite, but I did like staying off the gravel.

The good news is that hump day was about a week ago, so there are now more days here behind us than ahead. The frustrating part is that even though they have requested airlift to get us out of here, we still don't know exactly when we'll be leaving and probably won't for a while. Even more frustrating is that I may be out of Kandahar by the 12th, but still might not be home until the 18th. This is normal for a deployment and usually I'm much more tolerant of the uncertainty, but it's different when you have a target date that falls right in the middle of the return date range. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed. Hope to see you there! --Steve

I'm ready to roll...

Hello everyone! So after being a raptor for over 6 months I am finally blogging! Although I've read the blogs before, I have never actually done one. I just wanted to say how good it was to be back after all my summer fun in the sun! I went to California, Las Vegas, New Jersey, NYC and Maine.....during these trips and in between I have tried to keep up my workout routine with at least a long walk or a short jog, but def was not on top of it as I had been last spring.

I went to Sahuarita this past Saturday and completed four miles walking, rather than running because of aches in my hips and sides. I am happy to say they are starting to feel better! Thank you all who kept going and for the emails/blogs about your experiences these past few months. I am excited to get back into the swing of things of running, eating healthy and sharing this journey with all of you :)

Jim Click Tia style

I really enjoyed my run on Sunday but I was a little sad that from the photos that I look much larger than pre-baby.
I ran it in 1:07. Which was seven minutes slower than my time 2 years ago.
I ran a decent race but I did run a too fast initial mile.
It was very hot in my quality tshirt.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

October 4- Jim Click Run and Roll 8K

Our Raptors have been out and about and living their lives but we still train on! This is the time when the training is the hardest for everyone. We've been in waking up at the butt crack of dawn running for no one but ourselves and we don't look different and the scale is the same.
But...
these are also that days that count the most. They are the days when we add our mileage and in the end we will be faster and stronger than yesterday. When you cross that finish line, you won't have anyone to thank but your mind and body. So, dust off your shoes and be thankful that we are able to move and work our body to do great things.Enjoy those precious few hours or minutes that you have alone with your thoughts or your music and review your progress. Maybe you were a veteran Raptor who came into this group thinking that it would be "fun" but turns out that you gained a new family hobby and many, many free t-shirts to wear at home. Maybe you were a new Raptor this year working to be a better person by running or walking your way back to healthy lifestyle. Maybe you just wanted a little family to see every Saturday. Whatever your story, you are a Raptor. We love each other and continually work to be better.

If we haven't seen your face for awhile on the blog or on the course, now is the time to do it. We want you back.
If you have been here all along, thank you! I appreciate your dedication and work out ethics. You one of the strong members that motivate our group when the numbers get smaller. You make my day when I see you and it's just the 4 of us. The Raptor blood runs deep in you.

If you are Steve, congratulations! You are doing an amazing job out there. Especially stellar job on your 10 miler in 8 minutes!! You are schooling us all. Sounds like you will be ready for a FULL marathon!

If you are The Vettas, our hearts and hopes are with you. We love you very much and are very sad about your loss. Hopefully, the Raptors will provide some support for you in this rough time. It takes all kinds to be a Raptor. We have little baby Raptors, we have big Raptors, we have Raptor Moms and Raptor Dads. We have Raptor teachers and Raptor students. I can't imagine a world without my Raptors.

Raptor Claw!

Army 10 Miler - Kandahar

Hello Raptors! Today was the day, my longest competetive run to date, and it went great. I was hoping to finish in under 1:30:00, and did it in 1:27:22 (Garmin time again, not official). I felt pretty good the whole race, and still managed to kick it up a notch at the end, although just barely. Not bad for a 38 year old man! Just in case anyone cares, here's my GPS data (switch to satellite view or it won't mean much). The course was flat, but only a few of the roads here are paved. Everything on the north side of the runway, and some on the south side, is gravel and pretty dusty. My knees are a little stiff, but on the whole I feel great. They were signing people up for a 1/2 marathon on 7 November, so I'll probably run that too. There's not much to do here off duty, so running is pretty popular.

We're almost half way finished, and I can't wait to be home. It's starting to look like I won't be home until the week after Phoenix, but there's still a chance so fingers crossed. There are plenty of other races to run! See you all soon.

- Steve

Tia's Back!

I've been gone awhile and I'm not sure why.

I've been horrible at my training and missed a few team runs due all kinds of excuses BUT...

Yesterday, I ran my 6 miles and it was a hard but I took it one mile at a time. It's getting thick. My goal today is to upload some Raptor photos today.

My apologies to Steve and the rest of the Raptors for being absent from the blogs lately. It's been a crazy two months with school starting again and me being lazy I guess.

:(