concerned with the medal. He insisted I go, I obeyed, but on the way there I became lost and never showed up. Matt was angry, and when I showed up later at work, he said,"If I find out you missed that on purpose, I'm gonna kick your a-s!" I did actually get lost. I was having some mental problems at the time, a result of the depression. It later got worse.
To combat my sadness I tripled my bicycle mileage, and trained hard on the bicycle for the first time since I'd been in Korea, allowing no rest days to recover, intent on making myself as sick, numb, and tired as
possible. I didn't want to feel any emotion. It worked. By June 1, I had a cold but was calm. My squadron begged me to run a 5 kilometer race on "Sports Day", an annual event
where squadrons compete against each other to make their commanders and units look good. It was a big thing for us, and they knew I was doing well in my racing, so I was the obvious candidate to run. I said no, no,
no, and then no, then absolutely not, and then, sick as a dog, tired from the bicycle miles, changed my mind. My entire squadron was there to see
the ugly events unfold. I needed more ego points before I flew out to the United States on my month-long exile in Virginia.
My good friend Deena Myer shot these photos--thanks Deena! I was employing my subdued-clothing tactic, to make myself hard to see, and this particular shirt and shoes were the lightest and thinnest I owned. I rarely wore socks for short races--the tiny bit of extra reciprocating weight could cost me a race in a photo-finish. I forgot to take off the purple watch!
I pulled away on the first climb, the same climb that started the bicycle race weeks earlier, savoring the sound of panting and
pain behind me. I tip-toed, knowing that going to hard in an uphill start would build lactic acid in my legs and make them stiff for the rest of the race. It seemed my challenge was to pace myself in the beginning and then go all out in the later parts of the race, so instead of pushing myself, I just concentrated on keeping up my leg speed. Cresting the hill, I didn't want to look back and give the the impression I was nervous, so I listened to the footsteps behind me on the fast downhill. They were going "pat...pat...pat" and I was going "pat.pat.pat.pat". It was obvious my stride was faster, and soon all I heard was my own footsteps and panting. I never looked back, wanting only to win by as much
time as possible, to humiliate completely. I won by 2266
feet, or, 2 minutes and 50 seconds (the third place runner collapsed in exhaustion at
the finish). The second place was also from my squadron so, we did very well that day, and I proved I was the best of the worst. Then I bought some doughnuts and flew out to the
United States.