Art La Flamme

Figured it out yet?

That is, of course, me and Frank Shorter. Frank Shorter (book), winner of the gold medal in the marathon at the Munich ’72 Olympics (YouTube). And silver medal winner in the same event in ’76. And winner of just about everything else. Frank Shorter, arguably the American voice of marathon running.

I say arguably, because there’s this other American runner, Bart Yasso, who could also be described as the American voice of marathon running.

That’s Frank and me and Bart Yasso (blog, book, Twitter, Yasso 800′s).

Wow. Just wow.

These two superstars came to Iraq with the groups, The Warriors Tour (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter), which was sponsored by Under Armour.

Oh, and with them were others — like Sandy Magnus. (Twitter). Did I mention that she was amazingly nice? Even gave me a signed photo to take to my daughter — girls need to go to space (she was there 4 and a half months).

Sadly, we did not get to race. The crew brought with them everything necessary to have a fully sanctioned race, just like in the US. Only weather shut us down.

I thought it looked OK. But what the hell do I know?

Does make for some pretty photos, though. Here are some of the war / peace machines.

I told Frank that I took to running because of my PTSD. He said he took to running because of the stress of Yale. Oh, and he said that life has been grand because his running has not defined him — when he runs, he runs, but the rest of the time he has a life.

Oh, and I love that everyone was blogging, posting to YouTube, active on Twitter, etc. Very well covered events.

I hope I hear from Frank. I was to ask him about ’74 an Japan. And Bart? Egads, he has me wanting to go run, and run long again. He’s a dangerous man!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 7:00 pm and is filed under Army, Blogging, Iraq, Military, PTSD, Photography, Running, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.