Running to sweet home Alabama

08.20.2008

Story by Sgt. Anthonie Seymour 

70th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

By Sgt. Anthonie Seymour
70th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment

"I can run to Daleville just like this. All the way to Daleville and never quit." Where is Daleville and who's in a hurry to get there?

Daleville is more than 5,500 miles away in Alabama, and is home to the 641st Ordnance Company, Explosive Ordnance Disposal team, Alabama Army National Guard.

"One of our unit's goals is to run from Camp Bondsteel to our home unit in Daleville, Ala.," said 1st Lt. Charles Woodley, EOD executive officer. "We've tried to think of a way to motivate people to work on their run, and we all want to go home eventually. This is a good way to track our progress – to track out our distance home."

The "Run Home to Alabama" challenge originated with 1st Sgt. Pete Allen. He said the program works because the EOD team keeps its eyes on the goal.

"It works on purpose, direction and motivation," Allen said. "Our purpose is to learn to be team players while at the same time improving self-fitness. The Soldiers have been directed that they need to run two and a half miles, three times a week or more to meet their goal. There is 5,571 miles between them and Alabama - to be run by 10 Soldiers wanting to get home. That's motivation."

Running will not be the only way to gauge distance. Woodley said that walking and biking were other cardio exercises that would be tallied, though the biking would take some calculation.

Taking the biking portion of the Air Force's physical fitness test, which is 6.2 miles, and dividing it by the Army's two-mile run, the EOD team determined that 3.1 miles on a bike equals one mile of running.

A tracking sheet keeps up with the weekly mileage members run, walked or biked and miles they must complete to get home. This circular graph measures the months until the Alabamans return to Daleville, making it a race against the clock..

"Typically, they run in groups of two or three, and they keep track of each other. A [run] week goes from Monday to Sunday, and they give me their miles on Monday to be tallied. We have an average per week that we have to run. As long as we maintain that average we will make it home."

Physical conditioning is essential to the EOD team because making it home to "Bama" in one piece, may mean team members must occasionally wear the "bomb suit" when handling some of the more dangerous ordnance.

"The EOD team needs to be in good shape," Woodley said. "One reason is he bomb suit. It weighs 80 pounds by itself, and the time you have to stay in the bomb suit varies from 30 minutes to an hour, and walking anywhere from 200-300 meters, and back, is standard."

Higher physical fitness scores, and lowering body weights are an added byproduct of the EOD "run home challenge."

"On our last diagnostic, the run was the weak point for a couple of Soldiers. This [program] will help them get over that," Woodley said. "We've seen a lot of improvement. One of our Soldiers has lost close to 20 pounds, and his run time has come down about a minute and a half."

"My weight has gone up, but my run time has gone down," said Spc. Christopher Hale, EOD team member. "My run time was close to 18 minutes, and I realized I was very out-of-shape when it came to running. I started to participate in the program, and ran a 14:36 at [Camp] Atterbury (Ind.,) and surprised the whole team and myself."

The Run Home Challenge is not popular with all the members of the EOD team, but many outsiders have gotten interested in the team's progress, spurring some rivalry.

"Other people, outside the unit, are cluing into it as well, and they're asking us how much we ran and who's in the lead," Hale said. "It's a little bit of a competition. You come back from a run and everyone wants to know how far you ran to get an idea of about how far they're going to have to run to keep up,"

Allen leads by example, running twice daily on most days. He currently leads all comers with more than 230 miles.

"Goals need to be measureable and achievable," Allen said. "I wish we could run the 5,571 miles all down hill with the wind at our backs, but we have obstacles. Have you seen the hills on the perimeter road?"

Woodley, who recently ran 11 miles in a single session, and Hale, who is currently fourth in run mileage, have individual goals too.

"I'm on the 1,000 mile track as an individual goal," Woodley said. "We plan on making T-shirts that list Soldiers' names who make the '500-mile club,' the '750-mile club' and the '1,000-mile club.'"

However far they get, they will get there as a team.

"Everybody is going to be motivated differently," Woodley said. "Some people like it and some people are probably not that fond of it, but it seems that everyone is on board."

"This gets us out of the monotony of doing PT. I'm not just doing this to pass a PT test [just] because, it's the standard," Hale said. "It creates a new goal. It's something we're all working on together. I'm running for a goal that everyone else has as well."

"Because we're trying to get everyone home," Woodley added.

• Date Taken: 08.20.2008
• Date Posted: 08.20.2008 16:51
• Story ID: 22712