Lone Survivor_ The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 ( PDFDrive )

And once more we set off for the beach, accompanied by an instructor who
showed up from nowhere, running alongside us, shouting for us to get moving.
We had been told what awaited us. A four-mile run along the beach, going south,
two down and two back. Thirty-two minutes on the stopwatch was allowed, and
God help anyone who could not run eight-minute miles through the sand.
I was afraid of this, because I knew I was not a real fast runner, and I
psyched myself up for a maximum effort. I seem to have spent my whole life
doing that. And when we arrived at the beach, I knew I would need that effort.
There could not have been a worse time to make the run. The tide was almost
full, still running in, so there was no appreciable width of drying hard sand. This
meant running in either shallow water or very soft sand, both of which were a
complete nuisance to a runner.
Our instructor Chief Ken Taylor lined us up and warned us darkly of the
horrors to come if thirty-two minutes proved to be beyond some of us. And sent
us away, with the sun now climbing out of the Pacific to our right. I picked the
line I would run, right along the high point of the tide, where the waters first
receded and left a slim strip of hard sand. This meant I’d be splashing some of
the time, but only in the shallowest surf foam, and that was a whole lot better
than the deep sand that stretched to my left.
Trouble was, I had to stick to this line, because my boots would be
permanently wet and if I strayed up the beach, I’d have half a pound of sand
stuck to each one. I did not think I could lay up with the leaders, but I thought I
could hang in there in the group right behind them. So I put my head down,
watched the tide line stretching in front of me, and pounded my way forward,
staying right on the hardest wet sand.
The first two miles were not that awful. I was up there in the first half of the
class, and I was not feeling too bad. On the way back, though, I was flagging. I
glanced around and I could see everyone else was also looking really tired. And
right then I decided to hit it. I turned up the gas and thumped my way forward.
The tide had turned during the first twenty minutes and there was just a slight
width of wet sand that was no longer being washed by the ocean. I hit this with
every stride, running until I thought I’d drop. Every time I caught a guy, I treated
it as a personal challenge and pulled past him, finally clocking a time well inside
thirty minutes, which wasn’t half bad for a packhorse.
I forget who the winner was, probably some hickory-tough farm boy petty
officer, but he was a couple of minutes better than I was. Anyway, the guys who
made the time were sent up into the soft sand to rest and recover.