Atlanta Peachtree 10K

Today is July 4, the traditional day of the Atlanta Peachtree 10K, held in the capital of the south, Atlanta, GA. The biggest race on the Atlanta race calendar. Something that everyone looks forward to as part of the sunny southern summer. Well. It is sunny here anyway.

Let's see, there were over a 1000 people here today. A lot more than ran the marathon 2 weeks ago. We had a banner from Atlanta. We were "Time group 11 - Afghanistan"
My unit was in charge of organizing this, and we had a lot of runners too. Atlanta even sent us their super-secret Peachtree 10K t-shirts, and made us all promise not to put up any t-shirts until the folks in Atlanta run the race and get their shirts later today.

Quotes:

P1: What's the plan?
Me: Stay in the back and not get run over.

P2: I couldn't even think about doing a marathon here.
Me: That is the general idea. If there is any thinking involved, you would not do it.

P3: The heart is willing, but the knees are weak.

P3: Airborne. All the way. Airborne. All the way . . . (these are standard call and response slogans for the main unit here)

P4: Everyone taking your malaria pills? (as a group of us reached a flooded out section of the course)

Soldier Enters an Atlanta 10k run from Iraq (NYTimes article about our sister race. But we were before them :-) )

The Peachtree comes to an Outpost in Iraq (Atlanta Journal Constitution article about Bib #1. Bib #2 was in Afghanistan)