The Alpha Group

This is just a, "that is kind of funny" type of update.

Lately, we have been doing PT twice a day, everyday. Monday, Wednesday and Friday are run days (or something like that).

We had previously completed a one mile run as a type of assessment to see where we were all at in our running ability and speed, as well as push-ups and sit-ups.

Now, I am not much of a natural runner, but I had been working on this prior to coming to CH-BOLC. For my age group I need to do the 2-mile run in at least 18 minutes, 18 seconds. It took me a while, but I felt pretty good when I got myself to where I could do the 2-miles in about 17 to 17.5 minutes.

So, I was really excited when we did the one mile and I completed it in 7 minutes, 58 sec! I thought that was pretty good. However, I had no lofty thoughts that this then meant that I was a speed-demon.

So you can imagine my surprise this last Monday, when we were broken into running teams based on speed, and I was put in the ALPHA group. These were all of the really fast people who had been passing me in the one mile run (I might have even been lapped a couple times).

I explained to the Alpha-group leader that I thought that I might be in the wrong group and he just told me to try to keep up and to drop out if I needed to do so. Well, I stayed with them for about a 1/4 mile, and then I was looking for the oxygen tank (why do the "professional" athletes have oxygen tanks?).

I walked, jogged, sprinted, coughed, and sputtered my way through the run and got back to our starting point. When it was all said and done I spoke to our NCO in charge about my situation. He looked at his records and said that his records showed that I ran the 1-mile in 5 minutes, 5 seconds! I told him that I have never run that fast, and shared my ACTUAL time. He smiled and said that I should have been in the CHARLIE company, which is where I will be tomorrow. Hopefully I will not be looking for the oxygen tank; at least not as needfully.