Afghanistan veteran Brian Walker runs the half marathon in memory of fallen comrades»
There are times when Brian Walker is running a marathon or half marathon and he begins to cry as he senses the presence of Army comrades who fought alongside him in Afghanistan but didn’t make it back.
It happened during the Colfax Marathon last year when he felt as if he was “getting to see my friends.” Sometimes he hears them speaking with “little whispers” in the back of his mind, encouraging him to keep going.
It happened again Sunday, 8 miles into the 13.1-mile Colfax half marathon, when he was starting to feel tired and his legs were hurting.
“That’s when you start to dig deep and look inside,” said Walker, 31, who suffered a traumatic brain injury shortly after being deployed in 2011. “When I looked inside today, one of my soldiers who killed himself came to mind. True to form, toward the end (of the race) when it’s do-or-die time, the little voices came back and were going, ‘Push! Push! It doesn’t hurt, you’ve been in worse pain, just go.’ It’s great, because you realize you’re never running alone.”
Walker, who works as a nurse at St. Anthony Hospital, was one of 8,318 finishers Sunday in races that included a marathon, half marathon, 10-miler and marathon relay. He was first inspired to run by Lt. Clovis Ray of San Antonio, with whom he was stationed in Afghanistan. Ray was a marathon runner who would run half-mile loops for hours around the perimeter of their base to maintain his sanity.
“He was someone you just looked up to, and the first thought you had was Captain America,” said Walker, who finished Sunday
in just over 2 hours and 10 minutes. “He was someone who believed in the good of people, and after 11 months ‘in country,’ it’s kind of hard to feel like you have a soul anymore. From calling in air strikes on people to shooting people, being shot at, not knowing what day is going to be your last day, you just kind of feel empty. But Lt. Ray was someone that every day got up, he ran around the base and would always greet everyone saying, ‘Today’s a great day, guys. We’re doing great things.’”
Walker said Ray was mortally wounded March 15, 2012, when shrapnel from a rocket-powered grenade sliced his femoral artery. Ray had wanted to run the Honolulu Marathon, so Walker decided to do it in his honor later that year, registering only two weeks before the race. The longest he had run at that point was 8 miles, but he got through it, “dying” from mile 10 onward.
“That was when I fell in love with running, because through the tears of running, through the pain, it was the first time since going to war that I was able to get my brain to shut off, the first time that I felt peace,” Walker said. “That’s the day I became a runner.”
Running has helped him cope with the lingering effects of his brain injury. He had to “reteach” himself how to learn, and his balance remains impaired. He also has dealt with night terrors, depression and PTSD. The number of veterans committing suicide has hovered around 6,000 each year since 2005, according to the Veterans Administration.
“I’ll be the first one to admit that I’ve held a gun to my head,” Walker said. “Were it not for the Veteran Crisis Line, I probably wouldn’t be here today. I run now because it is my peace and tranquility. It’s my connection with who I am and what I want, and it’s also my connection with my friends that I don’t get to see because they’re dead. I have music blaring, the world around me ceases to exist, I’m in pain and it hurts but you just keep going, and through all of that you start to hear little whispers from the back of your head.”