http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?s...1&archive=true
By Lisa Burgess, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Monday, October 8, 2007
ARLINGTON, Va. — Running the Army Ten-Miler in 1 hour, 25 minutes is a solid, respectable time, particularly for a 40-year-old man. That’s a pace of 8:50, or just under 9-minute miles, certainly faster and longer than the average Joe can move. Not bad. Not bad at all.
For 1st Lt. Ivan Castro, running the Army Ten-Miler in 1:25 is pretty incredible.
Running it at all is a miracle.
To begin with, Castro, a former weapons sergeant in the 7th Special Forces Group with 17 years of military service, is totally blind.
He suffered multiple wounds, including the loss of his right eye, the loss of sight in his left eye, and his right index finger, in Iraq in September 2006, after a mortar hit the rooftop where he was providing fire support during a battle with insurgents.
Only 12 months ago, doctors questioned whether Castro would make it through another week, much less back into the Army, he said.
“This time last year, I was in bed in a hospital,” said Castro, who had tubes everywhere, a filter in his heart, monitors hooked up to anything that could be monitored, and a nerve block surgically installed to control pain so severe, the drugs necessary to control it would have left the soldier close to a coma.
But Castro himself had no questions.
There, in that hospital bed, he said, he set himself two goals to achieve within a year: run the Ten-Miler and the Marine Corps Marathon.
Castro traveled to the Washington, D.C., Ten-Miler from Fort Bragg, N.C., where he remains on active duty.
At Bragg, Castro trained for his two races with Maj. Phil Young, who was Castro’s team leader in the Special Forces.
Castro runs tethered to Young using two white shoelaces tied together. Young calls “audibles” as they move, warning Castro of possible hazards. But most of the guiding is done with the string, the men said.
“He was trained [in the Special Forces] to improvise, adapt and overcome,” his wife, Evelyn Galvis, said. “That’s what he’s done, and what he’s going to keep doing.”
With one race down, Castro said he is now focused on running the Marine Corps Marathon on Oct. 29.
Meanwhile, he also has a new goal for the Ten-Miler: To come back next year, “and make [my time] even faster.”
AMEN!
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