An Cosantóir

An Cosantóir March 2015 www.dfmagazine.ie 28 | by PTE NIALL KILCRANN PhOtOS BY COY SGT TONY GREHAN, CAPT J QUINN, PIO 46 INF GP Tiberias Marathon it wasn't a normal day in the life of a soldier serving in the UN- DOF mission area and won't be forgotten for a while. " I n January, three members of 2 Platoon, 46 Inf Gp, uNDOF, participated in the tiberias Winter Marathon, which took place not far from where we were stationed in the Golan heights. For Pte Stephen healy and Pte tommy O'Donnell it was their first marathon, while for me the chance to run a marathon in the mission area was always appealing, hav- ing run seven marathons previously. I also plan to run the London and toronto marathons for the Croí charity on returning home. The three of us began training gradually, building our mileage up from small 8km runs to 30km runs. Our training was also affected by operational requirements. A month into the mission we were tasked with de- ploying to Position 80 in the Area of Separation. The difference in training was vast. In Camp Ziouani we had a 2km track on the inner perimeter of the camp, which was good for long runs, compared to shorter runs in other camps, and in bad weather was sometimes not fit for training on. So while we got our long runs in Camp Ziouani, in Post 80 we kept up what we called a 'maintenance phase', which entailed doing whatever training we could. As the time passed the weather changed, from being close to 30°C when we first arrived to -3° with three feet of snow on the day of the marathon. However, the lower altitude in Tiberias meant little or no snow for the race, thankfully. With the Golan Heights and areas close to the camp covered in snow on the day of the race, we were on the road at 0615hrs in order to be on time for the 0900hrs start. As the roads were not as bad as we expected we arrived in Tiberias well ahead of schedule at 0710hrs. However, our earlier than planned arrival was very fortunate as we were greeted by a lot of runners already warming up and it appeared that the timings we had received were wrong. Consequently, af ter a quick change and photo we were on the road, with 42.2km of road ahead of us. The route was mostly flat with very few hills and it also was an out-and-back route (21km out, 21km back). As we all had different time goals we soon split up in the race. Pte Healy crossed the line in 3hrs 22mins, which was a fantastic time for his first marathon. I came in with a time of 3hrs 29mins, improving my personal best by 15 minutes. Pte O' Donnell finished the Irish line-up with a time of 4hrs, another good time for a first marathon. Af ter the race we met up with our support team for the day, Sgt Maj Derek Lambe, Coy Sgt Tony Grehan and Tpr Frank Black, and we all went to McDonald's for some post-race refreshments, a rare occurrence out here! Still, it wasn't a normal day in the life of a soldier serving in the UNDOF mission area and won't be forgotten for a while. On 9th January 2015 three members of 46 Inf Gp, uNDOF, participated in the tiberias Winter Marathon, the lowest altitude marathon in the world. In this article Pte Niall Kilcrann gives his account of the day.

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