What’s your story?  Why did you join the 24 Hour Brigade?  Send it to me at david.swanson100@gmail.com.

Please feel free to look me up on Facebook.  David Swanson from the West Point network…

More pictures will be posted later.  For now, I’ll leave you with a shot of sheer victory.  Indeed, some pictures really are worth more than words.

Guys like Tom who have done heroic things over there - things far more heroic than running in circles on a track - are the motivation behind the 24 Hour Brigade.

While my friends are cruising in the tropics and backpacking around Europe, there is no place I’d rather be this Spring Break than in Oklahoma getting ready to run for 24 hours!

I think that maybe the only thing crazier than running or 24 hours is trying to organize an event like this in only 3 months! I didn’t know what to expect for this inaugural year, but friends like you have melted my heart time and time again. Mingling with people who care for soldiers like I do will never cease to choke me up.

It’s hard to believe that this Friday is finally the day! I’ll start running at 5pm Central Standard Time at the track at my alma mater, Yukon High School. And I won’t stop, of course, until 24 hours later. The goal is to complete 135 miles in that time.

If you’re going to be in the metro Oklahoma City area, I want to invite you to come out and run a few steps with me. I keep joking that my real friends are the folks who will show up at 1, 2, and 3am in the wee early hours of Saturday morning.

I covet your prayers. For my body, for my mind, for the entire event…

Faith, hope, and love to you all. Beat Navy - always!

David

Joshua 1:9

Need Motivation?  Watch this video.

106 Sapling Candidates came to the start line to compete for 30 slots to the Sapper Leader Course this summer. At the end of the day, only 57 of those original 106 even made it to the finish line.

The try-out consisted of 5 scored events – APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test: 2 minutes of push-ups, 2 minutes of sit-ups, 2-mile run), dead-hang pull-ups, rope climb, 5-mile run between 35 and 40 minutes, and a 12-mile ruck march/run.

There was also a gut-check of a smoke session that lasted about an hour. Fun times.

Zodiac PT... Get some.

I was the rabbit for the 5-mile run. I was supposed to finish in 35 minutes on the nose, but I got a little excited, and even the Garmin couldn’t keep me from finishing in 34:10. However, I am happy to report that 15 Saplings hung with me and received full credit for the run.

I took off pretty fast. You can see in the mirror that the Saplings had yet to catch me.

Here we are approaching the turn-around point of the 5-miles with only 3 Saplings in tow. More would join us as we slowed the blistering pace.

Then my Sapper Buddy – Jack Wittkamper – and I were the 3-hour pace-men for the 12 mile ruck. Anyone who finished behind our pace was a NO GO for the event.

The 3-hour standard bearer

Forever Sapper Buddies - Jack and Dave

I was impressed with the many courageous performances by the Sapling Candidates. I have no doubt that we will be sending a crop of GFD’s to the Sapper Leader Course this summer.

Essayons.

Never quit.

$50 x 1000 Troopers = ?

Fifty. Thousand. Dollars.

We can so do this.

Many of you have already surpassed the $50 mark, and I salute you. You have already earned your 24 Hour Brigade unit patch!

1000 Troopers. $50 each.

Enlist HERE.

Sponsor a Trooper HERE.

Sponsor my 24 hours of effort HERE.

I’m going running.  117 miles planned for this week.

Never quit.

Boz Blog

Dutch, Reformed

The Pirana Brothers

How about a little Quid Quo Pro here in the Brigade?  Promote us in your corner of cyberspace, and I’ll mention you in mine.

No, I replied. I’m just here to run.

And then for the next 10 miles I thought about why I was really out there there running circles on the track.

Finish this sentence: I am going to run for 24 hours…

To raise funds and awareness for the Wounded Warrior Project…

To find out if I can…

To find out if I can’t…

To earn tomorrow’s breakfast…

For my friend Tom Martin. I’ve run many a mile for Tom in the past year…

Because I care for Soldiers, and this is the best way I can think of to let them know that…

Bid me run and I will strive with things impossible.

My roommate’s response, said in a tone similar to “You know you’re a Redneck when…,” was: You know it might be too cold to be outside when your milk freezes solid before you finish running!

I don’t disagree.

But suffering in the cold isn’t anything that tough people haven’t done before.

I’ve been mocked, sneered at, and called corny for what I’m about to tell you, but I’ll swear upon a stack of Bibles that it’s true, and I dare you to tell me that the chills I get up and down my spine aren’t real.

Whenever I’m running in the cold, when my fingers have gone numb and my face is chapped and burned from the wind, I think about the soldiers of the Continental Army who survived the winter of 1777 at Valley Forge. I’m serious. A countless number of those soldiers survived the winter without shoes. I can always make it another hour with cold fingers.

In that vein, whenever I think I’m growing weary and that the distance may be too much I think about the soldiers who experienced the Bataan Death March during World War II. In organized events, I will always know where the finish line is. Be it 24 hours, 100 miles – 135 miles, someday, hopefully! – I will always know exactly how many steps I have to take before I can collapse into a chair, get a massage, and gorge on calories. The soldiers at Bataan, they just had to keep moving. And, rest their weary souls, some of them never made it to the finish line. And so I run toward my finish lines for those who never made it to theirs.

A third source of motivation I have, whenever my feet grow sore from the pounding or with blisters and chafing, is to think about soldiers who are at the very same second patrolling in the mountains of Afghanistan. They don’t get to slow down or quit just because their feet hurt. Nor do I. And because I don’t quit now, in a controlled event, I gain confidence that I will have the intestinal fortitude to never quit on game day, when it really counts – in the middle of a real world, boots-on-the-ground mission.

Never quit. Never, never quit.