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Juneau athletes swim, run to honor veterans and their families
- Klas Stolpe
- 22 hours ago
- 9 min read
Honoree speaks to the challenges those veterans and families face
By Klas Stolpe
Juneau Independent
“Everybody is a tough guy until it is time to do tough-guy stuff,” military veteran Chris Condra said as athletes and their friends and families celebrated the first Ranger Lead The Way Swim Run Juneau event at the Eagle Valley Lodge in the Amalga Meadows Park on Saturday.
He had been asked what it meant to have best friend, race director Isaiah Campos, organize the event in honor of Condra and military families in recognition of their service, but also acknowledging the personal tolls many suffer.
“This means a lot,” Condra said. “It means a great deal. A lot of things go unnoticed. It is hard to explain some of the things that we go through. It is not just the physical, though. It is emotional, it is mental. It is the time you spent away from your family, the time that you never get back, you know? You spend years over in other countries. Kids don't understand that. They never do. They just know the dad's not there, mom's not here. You miss a lot of life events, and you don't get them back. And you give up a lot of that for just a little bit of pay and it's a big sacrifice from a lot of people… It means I have to be recognized for some of it, but at the same time I really don’t like the attention. I don’t like to be in the center. It was a job. We all sign up to do a job and try to do it honorably and to the best of your abilities…It means a lot that something like this event helps out other people.”
Eight athletes completed the grueling 10 miles of the SwimRun and another 14 participated in the 5-kilometer or one-mile run.
Aaron Morrison was the first to return from the SwimRun in two hours 10 minutes and 45 seconds.
From a sports standpoint, Morrison, who will be participating at the world championships in Sweden with his wife Tracey, said he was impressed.
“Isaiah was able to put together a race of this caliber,” Morrison said. “That swim was two miles in the open ocean in Juneau. It was crazy long. I love it when people take something that is crazy to do and make it a race. After the swim, I am running along and wondering if Charlie (Waters) will run me down in my full body wetsuit and if I could continue a pace that was reasonable...And as a cause, I love that Isaiah is supporting the Ranger Lead the Way program and everything that it supports for our military. Great cause, great race, couldn’t like it more.”
Participants in the SwimRun started at the lodge and ran to the Amalga Harbor Road down to the Gruening Park beach access, swam to Boy Scout Beach, ran the tidal trail to the Horse Tram Trail and along to re-enter the water near the Amalga cabin area, swam back to Gruening Park beach and ran back to the lodge — in their wetsuits with their safety and race gear.
“I think this is a great cause,” Tracey Morrison said. “As an event, I hope we can keep this going. If we start trying to get more people to train this way, pull from the triathletes. It is very much in line with Aukeman. We have people who are very interested, it is very much a niche.”
Many of the participants had been training on the course with the Morrisons when they learned of the race. Participant Kara Hollatz said that when Aukeman started out, they did a training camp.
“So maybe if we did something like that,” she said. “And you can support people in the process. I love to swim and run, particularly love to swim. It was a hard swim for me and often when things seem hard, I think, ‘Why am I doing this?’ I thought about how hard it is for all of our veterans and military families and all they go through and kept telling myself, they have certainly endured way worse than this. So I finished.”
Charlie Waters finished in 2:15:34, Abe Levy in 2:17:00, T. Morrison 2:25:27, Abby Cummins 2:28:37, Andrew Ferris 2:47:02, Hollatz 2:54:46 and Austin Schmidt 3:12:06.
“One hundred percent I would do it again,” Waters said “I would train more, but 100% I would do it again. It is a lot of fun. The cause for the race was my main motivation. There was a race in Sitka today, too, but I wanted to support Isaiah and the organization and the cause. Juneau’s first SwimRun, you have to support it and I am really glad I did.”
A heavy wave chop and winds did not make the swim easy, which impacts the endurance in the run segments.
“It was just amazing,” Levy said. “I love being out in the ocean swimming. I think that is a challenge for a lot of people. The same thing happens with triathlons where the swim is a big barrier for people, even just swimming in Auke Lake where it is dark and it is hard. And then you go out in the ocean and people get worried about animals and the currents. It is a very different beast so you do have to get groups of people training and getting that experience to get comfortable.”
Among other “dangers” were salmon schools. One exuberant Oncorhynchus keta (chum salmon) jumped over swimmer Andrew Ferris as he approached the final swim leg.
“I lifted my head out of the water to get oriented,” Ferris said. “It almost hit my face. It was a big fish.”
The final swimmer was Schmidt. The enormity of the exertion on exiting was summed up in his one-word expletive, said in the relief he felt reaching the beach and standing up.
“I just did not want to quit or give up on it,” Schmidt said. “I felt like I would rather die out there in the water than not complete the race or give up. During the run I wondered what will the second part of the swim be like. The first part was horrible, the second must be twice as bad. I thought if I didn’t make it in the water, it would be a better story to tell. But for some reason the second part of the swim was less stressful. I was in last place, I knew it. I would definitely do it again.”
Brandon Ivanowicz won the 5K in 19:45. Runners left the lodge to the Eagle River Landing Trail, turned right along the Horse Tram Trail and returned. The one mile course left the lodge to the Amalga Harbor Road and returned. Runners included Ivanowicz, Ryan Bischoff, Dartanan Campos, Demetrius Campos, Lauryn Campos, Glen Fairchild, Elena Hesson, Felix Hesson, Adrian Kleinhans, Cael Koentopp, Tammy Ladd, Ally Lindley, Anderson Murray, Chase Saviors and Andrew Walton.
Race director Isaiah Campos, who has participated in ocean swim fundraisers for military families via the Navy Seal Foundation, is hoping to make the Ranger Lead The Way Swim Run an annual event.
“Overall it was great,” Campos said. “Good turnout. Everybody seemed to be having fun. Hoping to build this for next year. I did it for my friend Chris. Because he is my best friend, it more close to home for me than prior Navy Seal swims. I just kind of wanted to switch gears and support the Rangers side and helping their families. He is a retired Ranger and been through a lot.”
Condra, 53, got a GED in 1990 and joined the Marine Corps in ’94. He served five years in the Marines and 21 in the Army, retiring as an Army Ranger. He has been stationed in Germany, Puerto Rico and Hawaii and has fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“I have been all over the place,” he said. “And if you are not home you are an absent father. You are not a father at all, you are somebody that supports your children. And it is heartbreaking. You never get that stuff back.”
He acknowledged additions and multiple marriages and spoke candidly.
“You can’t be much of a husband if you're not there,” he said.”Or if you come back and you're not the same person anymore, you've changed, you've seen things that people really shouldn't see. I think with America we don't recognize the fact of the brutality of a lot of things that we have to do over there. You don't see that here because it's not on your shores, and you forget about it. These things are fought over there to keep it away from them, or keep the stuff off of our shores so that people don't have to see those type of things.”
“People can see a movie or something but it's not like that. It doesn't taste the same, it doesn't smell the same. It doesn’t feel the same on your hands. It's a whole lot different when people are actually trying to kill you, bullets flying around, things like that. Watching people right in front of you develop things like PTSD from being shot at and they are not the same person anymore… Your reasons for joining are all gone as soon as you start getting shot at.”
He noted military training sharpens the ability to run and jump and the physical things.
“You need to build them tough from the inside, mentally, emotionally to be able to handle what you're about to see and what you are about to do and live with… That's the hard part because people don’t, they don't develop the mind enough to deal with some of these tragedies and the brutality of what they're about to do.”
“A lot of my friends died over there, or they come back here and they've killed themselves from the wounds that they can't live with or just mental disorders. It's constant. It's bad with me, too, and I spend a lot of time alone, it makes me very rough to be around sometimes…There are triggers and things that really bring back some pretty bad memories.”
He noted medications, but said, “Depression is depression, and it's institutionalized. When you spend half your life doing something, or most of your life, 30 years doing the same job, when it's gone, it's gone, like being in prison. When you're released from prison, you're institutionalized from that prison. It's hard to get out of that state of mind. So if people get released from the military, they don't know what to do with themselves, and they get depressed, and they end up killing themselves.”
Education and support groups have helped.
“The trauma doesn’t go away. You just have to learn to deal with it. Get good counseling with good tools, talk to other veterans about what worked for them… I don't think any of my difficulties or fights are any different than anybody else that has problems in the world. Just trying to deal with them and what brought them on and facing them. Letting more people know what you're dealing with, what you're struggling with helps... But by no means do I think I'm any more special than anybody else in that regard. Everybody's got problems. Everybody. Some are a little bit deeper and don’t go away quite as easily.”
Condra volunteers his spare time and money to children’s organizations and veterans’ events. He said if others wish to do the same they should research organizations to make sure the funds go where advertised.
He fears that war is constant.
“The tree of liberty has to be watered by the blood of tyrants and patriots, equally… Until people start realizing that and it strikes home to them and they lose somebody close to them.”
• Contact Klas Stolpe at sports@juneauindependent.com
