David Petraeus Can Run Your Ass Off

Gen. David Petraeus has been called the most completive man on the planet, and January's issue of *Runner's World *gives us a glimpse why.

*Today, he arrives for his workout at precisely 6:30 a.m., ready to hit the road in his New Balance 992s and an Army T-shirt. The subject quickly turns to running. "When we bring a new guy in, I take him out for a run," says Petraeus. "I'll go out hard, then ramp it up around five miles to try to waste him. I want to know how he'll react and respond to the challenge, what his strength of character is." *

It's the kind of brash comment invoked by high-school football coaches.
But the intellectual general (he earned a Ph.D. in international relations from Princeton) has more complex motives. "Obviously, I'm not just interested in whether someone is a good runner," he says. "But there's something about an individual who has self-discipline, drive, basic fitness, and the heart to run reasonably well that indicates the kind of spirit that you are after in people who take on tough tasks."*

Petraeus's aide-de-camp, Maj. Everett Spain, relates how he came to work for the general at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Spain, 37, has a
Duke M.B.A., a goofy smile, and a notebook that he carries at all times to jot down his boss's latest thoughts. "I got the call to meet the general at the gym at 0600 in my PT [physical training] clothes," says
Spain. "He took me out for a brutal five-mile run. We competed for another hour, one-on-one, in the gym. He beat me up pretty good. A little while later, I found out that he'd picked me as his next aide. That was my job 'interview.' We never talked about much but the workout."*

Of the 21 soldiers who began the 5.7-mile loop, only four (including
Nordby and Martins) hang with Petraeus to the finish. He comes in at a pace under six minutes per mile, impressive for a guy with a metal plate in his pelvis and a gunshot wound on his chest (courtesy of a training accident). "It's very inspirational," says one of the
Kentuckians, Capt. Bradley Chaney, who seems in awe of the general after getting dusted.

I consider myself a good, not great, runner, and I'm satisfied to hold an eight minute pace on my five mile runs. A six minute pace is harsh. In the summer of 2006, I presented a paper at a conference that Petraeus attended. At the end of the day, a couple of us were talking about going for a run around Fort Leavenworth. Petraeus' aide warned us that unless we wanted get our balls run off to not mention it around the General.

On another note, sources say that the reporter for this story was some kind of narcoleptic who said he needed fourteen hours of sleep a day. In Iraq? Good luck.