Photo By Petty Officer 1st Class Micah Blechner | 180407-N-QV906-107 KOROR, Republic of Palau (April 7, 2018) U.S. Army Capt. Daniel...... read more read more
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“I knew I was going to sign up when my friends on the ship told me there was no way I would be able to complete it,” declared U.S. Army Capt. Daniel Mathews.
Mathews, currently assigned to Pacific Partnership 2018, is the kind of person who likes to prove people wrong.
“I had never done one; I had never even trained for one,” Mathews continued. “I figured I would do one eventually, but I never imagined I would do my first marathon in the Republic of Palau.”
A marathon typically takes intense training for anyone to be able to complete. A respectable completion time for a 26.2 mile marathon is somewhere in the five hour mark and can be a daunting task. Mathews completed the course in four hours and 58 minutes.
“I just started out slow and figured I would keep that pace until my body broke,” explained Mathews. “I started running in a small group of three. There was a woman who was about 20 yards ahead of us and I decided to catch her.”
Mathews ran hip-to-hip with this woman for the next 19 miles.
“Around the 21-mile mark I started to get tired. She slowly broke away from me,” said Mathews. “I ended up finding her during the social event at the finish line; we are now Facebook friends.”
The day began at 1 a.m. at a gasoline station on the outskirts of Koror, Republic of Palau. Participants registered under the florescent glow of the gas station pavilion in-between the pumps.
It was hot: 89 degrees; it was humid: 100%.
“We then got into vans and drove out to the starting point,” Mathews continued. “I wasn’t really paying attention at first, but then, it was up and down, hill after hill. Not the normal kinds of hills I am used to back home in Washington. Big, punishing hills.”
After what felt like an endless car ride, participants emerged to what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. “The only lights we could see for miles were the headlights from the vehicles that took us out to the race start point,” Mathews commented.
Finally, under a flood of car headlights, a shot was fired from a starter’s pistol to begin the race at 2 a.m.
“We all started out strong,” Mathews explained. “It was kind of weird; my eyes had to adjust to the darkness pretty quickly after the starting line. But the race was awesome! Being out in the middle of nowhere, with zero light pollution, with no one but the runners on the road, it was truly peaceful.”
With only the light of the moon and stars to guide the runners through the correct course, Mathews ran.
Up and down the grueling hills, through cutbacks, exhaustion, dehydration and hunger pangs, Mathews ran.
“I kind of learned not to look at my [personal fitness tracker] after the halfway mark,” said Mathews. “I took a glance at my wrist at one point and it said 13 miles. About 20 minutes later I arrived at a water station where they congratulated me for being halfway finished. When I looked at my wrist, there it said that I had run 15 miles. By the end of the race my [personal fitness tracker] clocked me in at 31 miles.”
As the clock ticked on four hours and 58 minutes Capt. Mathews crossed the finish line.
“Everyone there was cheering and congratulating me. It was early in the morning. I don’t really know what happened, but I found myself really emotional. I had to try to hold back the tears.”
Capt. Mathews said that participating in the marathon was the perfect culmination of the first week of Pacific Partnership 2018 mission stop in Palau.
“Pacific Partnership is really about making relationships with the host nation in order to build capacity when it comes to humanitarian assistance and disaster response,” Mathews explained. “Over the first week of the mission my Civil Affairs team met with many agencies to train and assess how we can all best help those in need for the times when, not if, need is called for.
“I could not only see the sense of community at the end of the marathon, I could also feel it. Running that marathon and spending time with the Palauans helped inform the rest of my actions for the rest of the mission.”
Pacific Partnership 2018’s mission is to work collectively with host and partner nations to enhance regional interoperability and disaster response capabilities, increase stability and security in the region, and foster new and enduring friendships across the Indo-Pacific Region. Pacific Partnership, now in its 13th iteration, is the largest annual multinational humanitarian assistance and disaster relief preparedness mission conducted in the Indo-Pacific.
| Date Taken: | 04.10.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 04.22.2018 00:26 |
| Story ID: | 274016 |
| Location: | PW |
| Web Views: | 99 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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