Photo By Sgt. 1st Class Bridget J. Vian | (From left) U.S. Army 1st Lt. Osvaldo Ramos, the division transportation officer,...... read more read more
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BOLESŁAWIEC, Poland - Approximately 1,000 miles lie between Los Angeles and Seattle, or from Washington D.C. to Florida, or span Poland to France. For one 4th Infantry Division Soldier, it’s about 50 laps around Boleslawiec’s 20-mile mountain bike trails.
U.S. Army Maj. Sarah Blood, the supply and services officer-in-charge for Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, 4th Infantry Division, biked more than 1,000 miles (1,041.5 miles to be precise) during her deployment to Poland in support of Task Force Ivy and Operation Assure, Deter, and Reinforce.
Blood arrived in Poland in January 2023 but didn’t start trying to reach 1,000 miles until she was well into her rotation, racking up more than 600 miles in the last two months alone.
“About July timeframe it dawned on me, ‘Hey, I could get 1,000 miles while I’m out here. Why don’t I try and do that?’” Blood said. “So I calculated it, planned it, and that’s really all there is to it when you set a goal like that. You have to figure out a plan on how to achieve it.”
Unpredictable weather and a busy work schedule often got in the way, which led Blood to complete “two-a-days” at times, tallying more than 40 miles on a given day, but she didn’t let that discourage her.
“When you're trying to achieve a goal, if it’s easy to get, it’s not really worth it,” Blood said. “The best goals are harder to achieve…It’s about more than just enjoying it. Getting a college degree? That takes time, that takes dedication, it takes - in most cases - money - and you have to really work at it. You have to commit to it. The group that did the 1,000-pound (weight lifting) club here did the same thing. It’s the same sort of idea.”
This sort of accomplishment is nothing new to Blood. She also biked a cumulative 1,000 miles while deployed to Camp Arifjan, Kuwait as commander of Headquarters and Headquarters Detachment, 595th Transportation Brigade, from 2020-2021.
“We’d ride 10 miles, three days a week – and there, again, it got to a point where I was like, ‘Huh, I could make 1,000 miles,’” Blood said about her time in Kuwait. “I had other goals too. ‘Can I make 15 miles in an hour? Got that. Can I double that? Got that.’ I looked at my miles and thought, ‘Gosh, I’m going to make 1,000 miles before I leave.’
“I planned it, and achieved that goal as well,” she said.
Blood credited her military discipline and the mentality she’s developed as a Soldier as the key to her success.
“It takes military decision making,” she continued. “It takes planning. It takes resources. ‘Where do I get a bike from?’ [If it’s the 1,000-pound club], ‘Where do I get weights from?’ These are things that you have to resource and that's part of the planning considerations.”
However, at the end of the day, Blood boiled the importance of setting goals like hers down to one thing: physical fitness to build readiness and support the mission.
“We as a military, our job is to deploy. Our job is to be prepared,” she said. “If we come on a deployment and we don’t maintain physical fitness - cardio, muscle strength, muscle endurance, then we’re not fit to meet the needs of the military. We need to be ready to fight for and defend the United States, to support our Allies, to assure, deter, and reinforce. We have to maintain physical fitness.”
In order to achieve this state of readiness, it takes more than one Soldier’s dedicated efforts, and Blood didn’t hesitate to encourage others to join her.
“‘How do I get people to do it?’” Blood asked. “I’m a very ‘do as I do’ leader.”
“If Soldiers see me doing these things - setting a goal and achieving it, I hope they have it in their head, ‘She set a goal. She did it by planning. She did it by thinking through it and resourcing. She can do this. I can do this...I am going to do this planning and I'm going to achieve this goal,’” Blood said. “It makes them an all-around better Soldier, a better asset to the unit, to the Army as a whole, and to our Allies.”
To the Soldiers she works with, Blood does more than set a positive example. She builds teams.
“She accepts the people around her with open arms,” Sgt. 1st Class Jacob Vosburg, an operations contract support noncommissioned officer for Signal Intelligence and Sustainment Company, also with Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, 4th Infantry Division, said. “Anyone who wants to ride? Let’s go. It truly speaks a lot to her character.”
Vosburg, who works with Blood in the logistics section, is a part of the group of Soldiers who have joined her on the bike trails surrounding Boleslawiec. He spoke to the importance of building a community when setting fitness goals, especially after sustaining a knee injury that eliminated running as a fitness option.
“Soldiers can start to push away from things when it hurts,” Vosburg, who was encouraged to try cycling by his uncle, said. “That’s why I started to bike. After I had my surgery, I needed to find another outlet.”
“I hadn’t ridden a bike since I was 16,” he said, “but he got me a bike. We went eight miles and I didn’t even feel my knee.”
Vosburg encouraged others to find a workout that works for them, noting that biking was a positive outlet for him both mentally and physically.
Blood voiced similar sentiments, having shifted her focus to biking after injuries forced her to stop running.
“At the root of this, I bike because of injuries. I have 25 years in service,” Blood, a former enlisted Airborne-qualified parachute rigger, drill sergeant, and two-time unit commander, said “Sometimes, it gets to a point where you can’t run anymore.”
Blood reiterated the importance of staying active, sharing her advice to incoming Soldiers, as she prepares to depart Poland in the coming weeks.
“Take advantage of what’s available,” she urged. “Take advantage of what you can. You might not be into biking. You might not be into weight-lifting – there are other things to do. Don’t just sit there. Don’t just dwell on how much you miss home.”
“Do something for yourself. It’s not only healthy for you physically, but mentally,” Blood advised. “It will make the time go faster, get you one step closer to home, and it will make you a better you when you get there.
In regards to her approaching homecoming, Blood intends to keep riding when returns home to Colorado.
“I have a nine-year-old little girl who has been waiting for me to get home to ride from our house to the ice cream shop - which is exactly five miles,” Blood said. “We are going to go get ice cream on our bikes as soon as I get home, just as we used to before I left.
“Doing that with my little girl, it’ll be the best five miles of the year.”
| Date Taken: | 08.22.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 08.22.2023 05:45 |
| Story ID: | 451856 |
| Location: | BOLESŁAWIEC, PL |
| Web Views: | 421 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, 4th Infantry Division Soldier builds readiness on Poland’s bike trails, by 1SG Alexandria Hughes, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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