Team Infidel
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Washington Examiner
October 26, 2007 The 3-minute interview
Gen. Robert Magnus, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, has run in the Marine Corps Marathon, among other endurance races, regularly since 1984. The well-decorated general, 60, will run the People’s Marathon again Sunday — and start the race with Mayor Adrian Fenty — this time with a steel plate and eight screws protecting his right ankle, which he broke three weeks before last year’s race.
Why did you start running?
We get to run whether you like it or not in the Marine Corps. So you get to like running, but of course it was usually shorter distances. When I went to the Marine Corps Command Staff College in Quantico in 1984-1985, one of my classmates was a major named Chris Cortez. ... Chris Cortez (who retired several years ago as a major general) was an amazing runner. He would run five-minute or better miles. So I got to run with Chris, though I never got anywhere near that good.
You broke your leg before last year’s race. What happened?
I was just carrying an old clunky computer monitor, one of those big ones that weighed 30 or 40 pounds, back inside our residence at the Marine barracks at 8th and I streets. It was a perfectly dry day, and I was carrying it down the concrete outer steps to my basement and made every single step perfectly well. [I stepped] on the only wet spot with a little bit of moss on the concrete landing and I looked like ... Newton’s laws of motion were all working against me, and I snapped my right ankle in three places as I came down.
How do you feel when you cross the finish line?
You’re just pretty much exhausted. ... Just a feeling of satisfaction.
What’s it like running through the nation’s capital?
It’s a beautiful city. This is Washington’s marathon, even though it starts and ends in Virginia.
– Michael Neibauer
October 26, 2007 The 3-minute interview
Gen. Robert Magnus, assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, has run in the Marine Corps Marathon, among other endurance races, regularly since 1984. The well-decorated general, 60, will run the People’s Marathon again Sunday — and start the race with Mayor Adrian Fenty — this time with a steel plate and eight screws protecting his right ankle, which he broke three weeks before last year’s race.
Why did you start running?
We get to run whether you like it or not in the Marine Corps. So you get to like running, but of course it was usually shorter distances. When I went to the Marine Corps Command Staff College in Quantico in 1984-1985, one of my classmates was a major named Chris Cortez. ... Chris Cortez (who retired several years ago as a major general) was an amazing runner. He would run five-minute or better miles. So I got to run with Chris, though I never got anywhere near that good.
You broke your leg before last year’s race. What happened?
I was just carrying an old clunky computer monitor, one of those big ones that weighed 30 or 40 pounds, back inside our residence at the Marine barracks at 8th and I streets. It was a perfectly dry day, and I was carrying it down the concrete outer steps to my basement and made every single step perfectly well. [I stepped] on the only wet spot with a little bit of moss on the concrete landing and I looked like ... Newton’s laws of motion were all working against me, and I snapped my right ankle in three places as I came down.
How do you feel when you cross the finish line?
You’re just pretty much exhausted. ... Just a feeling of satisfaction.
What’s it like running through the nation’s capital?
It’s a beautiful city. This is Washington’s marathon, even though it starts and ends in Virginia.
– Michael Neibauer