Time to Run

It’s that time of year again folks, the Annual Museum of Aviation Foundation Marathon, Half Marathon and 5K Run/Walk is this Saturday! This is the 16^thannual event, and promises to be a great one. I ran my first organized half marathon back in November and it was a blast. This race should be a great one too. There aren’t many races of this type where you get to run on the grounds of an aviation museum and an active Air Force base during the same event. For an aviation and running enthusiast like me, it’s an awesome scenario. The weather is going to be chilly early Saturday morning, but there is plenty of sunshine in the forecast and temperatures should be great during the run.

There were 1,244 runners and walkers from around the United States and the world that participated in last year’s event, which was made even more meaningful with the addition of a shadow Marathon and Half Marathon at Kandahar, Afghanistan. Around 300 ran the race there.  The neatest part however was a live Skype session with race organizer U.S. Navy Master Chief “Lee” True in Afghanistan at the opening ceremony.  Brigadier General Lee Levy, 402nd Maintenance Wing Commander at the time, interviewed Master Chief True who said runners there came from 34 different U.S. states and several foreign countries.

The fastest runner in last year’s Marathon was first-place finisher Sammy Nyamongo from Atlanta with a time of 2 hours, 40 minutes and 22 seconds. With slightly warmer, drier weather forecast for this year, it will be interesting to see if anyone can beat that or any of the other times from last year (Women’s marathon: 3 hours, 24 minutes and 30 seconds; half marathon: 1 hour, 12 minutes and 12 seconds; 5k: 15 minutes and 33 seconds). See you at the race and look for a follow up blog sometime soon after with results, pictures, and maybe some video.

– Arthur Sullivan, Assistant Curator