Team raises funds for injured comrades Keesler Marine completes 177.5-mile, 5-day run

Published Nov. 13, 2008
By Susan Griggs
Keesler Public Affairs

KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, MISS. -- After running 13 marathons in the past 12 months, Jimmy Shields was ready for a new challenge ... a five-day run spanning 177.5 miles to raise funds for the Injured Marines Semper Fi Fund.

Shields, a gunnery sergeant in Keesler's Marine Corps Detachment for nearly three years, read about the Esprit de Corps Ultra Run in the Marine Corps Times and decided "to use my talents to benefit others, as well as to test myself and my abilities."

Dennis Miranda, a gunnery sergeant from the 4th Marine Corps District, Harrisburg, Pa., organized the event. Other team members were Brandon Richardson, a sergeant assigned to Marine Corps Recruiting Command, Quantico, Va.; and former Marines Andrew Strohecker and Joe Garcia who work for Naval Sea Systems Command.

The event was interwoven with historical significance for the Marines.

The course length of 177.5 miles signified the year the Marine Corps was founded. The Oct. 22 starting point was the site of Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, where the first two battalions of Marines were raised.

"We became known as the Tun Tavern Runners," said Shields, a weather instructor in the 335th Training Squadron.

The last leg of the run on Oct. 26 was the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington which ended at the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va. The memorial is modeled on the image of five Marines and a Navy corpsman raising the American flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Every stride in the run honored Marines who've been wounded in action. As of Monday, the Marine Corps' 233rd birthday, the Tun Tavern Runners raised nearly $14,150, with donations for the IMSFF still coming in.

The fund, established four years ago by Karen Guenther, a nurse at Camp Pendleton, Calif., who served in Iraq, has provided more than 8,000 grants totaling more than $21 million to help families of injured Marines with living and travel expenses.

The run wasn't a relay ---the five team members ran the entire race with a pledge that no one would be left behind, regardless of injuries, exhaustion or other problems. A two-man support crew in a Marine Corps recruiting Humvee blocked intersections and protected the runners from traffic as the course wound through city streets and country highways in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.

"I've been running since I can remember -- I've always been a runner," explained Shields, a member of the Gulf Coast Running Club. "I've done anything from local 5Ks to ultra marathons."

About a month before the race, he stepped up his mileage from doing one long run a week of 16 to 26 miles to doing two or three on back-to-back days to get his body accustomed to running while hurting and fatigued.

Shields and the team ran 37.8 miles on three days, 37.9 on one day and 26.2 miles on the last day for the Marine Corps Marathon.

"Our daily agenda was to wake up and get started," Shields recalled. "After 15 to 20 miles, we'd duck out and enjoy some lunch -- pizza -- and change our socks and other clothing articles. Then we'd get back at it.

"The days were fun and I was lucky to run with the group I did," he continued. "Saturday was the only day with bad weather -- the area was taking a front and it rained on us almost the entire day. Surprisingly, I never really got sore muscle-wise, but I did have some discomfort in my left Achilles tendon."

When he returned home, he took six days off with absolutely no running, but then began hitting the pavement again, with a 9-mile run Nov. 2.

"Being married to a runner can be a lonely job," Shields admitted. He and his wife, Elizabeth, have three children - Brenden, 12; Erin, 10, and Ryan, almost 8. He tries to do his runs before they wake up or when he's at work.

He's been able to spend more time with his family since he's been assigned to Keesler. Before becoming an instructor, he was deployed all over the world, from Norway to Iraq. His last deployment was in 2004 with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit for a humanitarian relief mission in the wake of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean.