Reservist from Maine sets up ‘Boston Marathon’ in Iraq

MANCHESTER, N.H. – An Army reservist who planned to run a marathon this spring in the states had to organize one in Iraq instead.

Capt. Rodney Freeman held his Iraq-Boston Marathon on Monday, the same day as the granddaddy of U.S. marathons in Boston. Freeman communicated in advance with the Boston organizers, who supported his event with running bibs, medals and other paraphernalia resembling the real thing used in Boston. The roughly 260 runners who took part far exceeded his expectations.

“The powers to be never said no,” Freeman told the New Hampshire Union Leader of Manchester. “I figured if I got six people to run a marathon in Iraq that it would be successful.”

Freeman, of York, Maine, is with the Manchester-based 1st Battalion, 172nd Field Artillery at Camp AdderTallil near the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah. Runners in Freeman’s marathon came not only from the United States, but from Great Britain, Italy and Romania.

The Americans included Spc. Joel Day of Brookline, 27, who was training to run his first marathon this year in New York when he was sent to Iraq.

“I signed up right away because it was my chance to run that first marathon,” Day said.

Freeman is a runner – he’s run three half-marathons as well as the Maine Marathon. But he was so busy handling logistics that he had to sit out his own race.

The Outdoor Life Network planned to show some of the footage from the Iraq-Boston race as part of its Boston Marathon coverage Monday night. The network also joined Boston organizers in supplying water bottles and other paraphernalia for the event.

The course for the soldier-runners was two loops around a 10-mile course inside their heavily fortified base and a jog past the Ziggurat of Ur, an ancient temple.

The base is home to various military units. For troops stationed there, life is a mixture of boredom and occasional extreme danger.

That’s where Freeman, 37, comes in. As base recreation officer, he said he tries to help maintain morale by arranging games, USO shows, basketball and softball leagues and “fun runs” around the base.

“I work with young enlisted men who are out there every day on convoys and they have some hellacious stories,” Freeman said. “If they have someplace to go to play pool, then maybe for that little bit of time, they’re back home.”