Air Force Sgt. Chris Miller ran 10 miles during his last day in Afghanistan, each step, he hoped, bringing him closer to home in Evanston and the start of the Chicago marathon.
“Every day in Afghanistan I’ve thought about running because when I think about running, I think about going home, about my family,” said Miller during a recent telephone interview from Kabul. “I think about running the marathon.”
Miller, 49, planned to spend part of his first day back Thursday training for the Oct. 22 race with his wife, Shari.
Like Miller, other American servicemen in Afghanistan and Iraq have swapped combat boots for sneakers to run around Iraqi palaces, over airfield tarmacs and on gravel trails that loop along heavily guarded perimeter fences. Running was one of their survival skills.
Monotony, longing for a loved one and the feeling that something good can come of life in a war zone all served as motivation to run, said some of the servicemen who will be among the estimated 40,000 participants in the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon.
A common thread in each of their stories was the desire for a sliver of normality found in a pair of running shoes.
“When I ran, it was like being at home for me and I started doing it every day,” said Chief Warrant Officer Michael Clemens of Burbank. “I signed up for the Chicago marathon in Baghdad.”
A member of the Illinois Army National Guard, he left in June 2005 for Iraq, where he was in charge of tactical Internet networks at Baghdad International Airport.
Clemens, 54, began running with his son four years ago because he wanted to spend more time with him, he said. They completed two Chicago marathons, but Clemens missed last year’s race because he was in Iraq.
In preparation for his return, he started running on the tarmac at Baghdad International Airport, which was hit periodically by rockets and mortar fire, Clemens said. He kept running–and training for the marathon–after he returned to the U.S. in the spring.
“My son finds no end in the humor of my going to war and training for a marathon,” Clemens said. “But I stayed focused on what I needed to do there and I focused on coming back to give my son a run for the money.”
Maj. Jeff Camp, 41, an IBM sales manager from Ft. Smith, Ind., returned home in June from Iraq, where he was a member of the Illinois Army National Guard.
Based for a time at Camp Echo, a forward post 60 miles south of Baghdad, he kept running as insurgent attacks outside the perimeter fence intensified.
Camp was surprised, like many other guardsmen, to find himself in Iraq. He vowed to make the best of his months in a war zone and get back into shape.
“Obviously I wanted to get out of Iraq, and your safety is the No. 1 concern,” Camp said. “But I was so much more aware of why I wanted to be fit. Heaven forbid I make it back from Iraq and then die from eating onion rings.”
Camp joined other soldiers who ran a “tremendously boring” circuit along a gravel path just inside the base’s perimeter fence (a difficult place to lob a mortar shell), past the mess hall, motor park and airfield.
Camp has lost 52 pounds since he began running.
“Once I signed up for the marathon, I was committed,” he said.
It has not just been those in the military who have used running as a coping mechanism.
Miller’s wife, Shari, said her running helped her cope with news reports of the mounting violence in Afghanistan.
Miller was a U.S. military spokesman from Camp Eggers in Kabul. Although he said it was safe inside the perimeter of the base, danger was not far away.
A bomb blast near the U.S. Embassy that killed two American soldiers last month was heard and felt by Miller inside the base. His account of the blast was transmitted back to the United States in news accounts.
On such days, his wife’s laserlike focus on the Chicago marathon was sometimes the only thing that held her together, she said.
“If I wasn’t running, I would have been in an insane asylum,” she said.
Neither she nor her husband has run a marathon before. Both believe they are ready for the challenge.
Chris Miller trained for months at an altitude of 6,000 feet. His wife acknowledges that will help him cross the finish line well before she does.
Given their situation this year, it doesn’t seem to matter.
“I’ll be behind him all the way, get it? It’s just too poetic.” she said. “It’s going to mean so much that he is here.”
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csheehan@tribune.com
