Resolution

Benjamin Cheever is the son of WWII vet and novelist John Cheever. Cheever the younger recently covered military running for Runner's World magazine, an experience that ended a few illusions for the author - illusions shared by many:

My first contact with the military was in Germany, where I met with soldiers who had been in Iraq and were heading back. I hope I don't lose you here, but I must say at the outset that to run with soldiers at Camp Ray, in Friedberg, was to take all my assumptions about the U.S. Army and have them turned upside down. As much as I'd feared conscription during Vietnam, I had mourned the loss of the democratizing draft and thought it appropriate that an army protecting a democracy include everybody. My father, the writer John Cheever, forged lasting friendships during World War II. He trained with a heavy-weapons battalion in Georgia. Late in his life and signing books, I saw him approached by a man he had known in Georgia. It was immediately clear that my father liked this guy, that the bond formed in the infantry had not been shattered--as many bonds are in this country--by differences in status and economics. The stranger called my father "Joey." The name I knew was John.

People go into the army now because they have to, I had thought; and yet my guide in Germany, Capt. Will Bardenwerper, was a Princeton grad. Bardenwerper was working in midtown Manhattan as a financial analyst when the World Trade Center was destroyed. He decided to enlist. My guide's provenance was unusual enough that he was teased about it, but there were also two Rhodes Scholars in the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Armored Division.

Running is a delight, and so authority figures disapprove.

A doctor waved me in off the road shortly after we moved into the neighborhood 18 years ago to warn that I'd destroy my knees. "Detach your retina," I was told by an editor over lunch. "Compress your spine, shatter your hips." I can't be the only person who has to run this gauntlet. How many times have you been asked about Jim Fixx? Authority figures in uniform are particularly scornful of vigorous exercise. "Trying for a heart attack?" the veterinarian in his blue smock asked me one torrid summer day, when I came in slightly flushed to get the dogs their shots. Uniformed groundskeepers have blown whistles and shooed me off golf courses. A policeman once tried to pull me out of a triathlon after I'd been hit by a car. That's right, after I'd been hit by a car. I remounted and finished the race. The military, I figured, would be the worst. Soldiers come uniformed and are international symbols of authority. knew they ran in boot camp, but then even policemen are slim during the pupa stage. Which is why I was shocked when a friend, the writer Esmeralda Santiago, said she had two brothers in the service--both ran. Frank had run as a bodyguard with the Joint Chiefs.

"The Joint Chiefs ?" I asked, bewildered. "They run?"

While the military running world and the civilian one are quite separate cultures, they do support one another's shared passion. Therefore, many prominent races in the States sponsor simultaneous, or "satellite," races overseas, in Baghdad and Afghanistan. The Honolulu Marathon does this, as does Boston. The mother race will send T-shirts, numbers, and sometimes even timing equipment.

After Germany, I had hoped to go to Iraq for the marathon that the Honolulu race sponsored in December. When the date was changed, I was told the race might be canceled and so abandoned the plan. It wasn't canceled, and I afterward wondered if I hadn't simply chickened out. Therefore I was excited when I learned that the Atlanta Peachtree Road Race 10-K sponsors a satellite event in Baghdad. I wrote organizer Julia Emmons. The 102-pound dynamo who has turned her July 4th event into the largest 10-K in the world told me they'd held the Baghdad Peachtree a couple times already and the story was an old one. This is different, I explained. I wanted to run in Baghdad. She wrote back: "The Atlanta Track Club cannot endorse anyone going into a war zone, thus potentially in harm's way."

I could see her point, but think of it this way. We have about 130,000 military personnel in Iraq. That's a mighty risk. How dramatically is this changed by the introduction of one more journalist, however frightened? The race was just weeks away when my Army contact in Baghdad, Maj. Todd Breasseale, gave me the green light. Suddenly I could see Emmons's point. Sure there were 130,000 military personnel in Iraq, but none of them were me. I'd been trying to do this for months, but now it seemed hasty, ill-considered.

My wife--and bless her heart for this--didn't want me to go. Because of the irregularity of military flights into and out of Baghdad, it would take almost a week to get there, and I was going to spend a full week in Iraq. The last days at home passed in a welter of chores, red tape, and anxiety. There were forms I didn't understand, shots I needed. Why did the army want to know my blood type? Janet walked by my office and found me standing at my desk holding a piece of string that went from the second button on my polo shirt to the top of my belt buckle.

Janet: What are you doing?

Me: Measuring myself for a bulletproof vest.

She warned me not to tell strangers that I was going to Iraq for a 10-K. "They'll know it's a lie, assume you work for the CIA, and kidnap you or kill you."

"I'm writing a book about running," I'd say, when the subject came up in out-of-family conversation. "This will be the biggest race ever held in Iraq," I explained. "July 4th."

"Oh, that's very brave," everybody said, which sounded like code for "Are you out of your mind?" The runners were more direct. "How hot does it get? Is there a T-shirt?"

This was one of my Christmas gifts this year - a great bargain, and one I'll use frequently. I've been a runner for years. (Man, I love that route and I'm damn glad I preserved it here.) I was stationed in Colorado twenty years ago when I discovered I actually enjoyed running. I was deployed with a Secial Ops crew somewhere at sea level, and I discovered first hand the benefits if "altitude training" when I found to my surprise I could keep up with the team even without having shared their training regimine over the previous months. Since then I've stuck with it, even while watching myself morph with the passage of years from speedy 5k runner to methodical marathoner (a distance for which I no longer have time to prepare).

But I still enjoy the sport, and I still make resolutions for the New Year. In 2007 I may get the chance to try one (or more) of those "satellite runs" first hand - and I hereby resolve to do any and all that I possibly can.

Why? Simple - I want the T-shirt.