Ice, snow, boots, gloves, this week is enough to turn toasty days of August into faint memories. If you went to this summer’s Taste of Edmonds, one memory may stand out — Paul Cretella on a treadmill.
The Fire District 1 firefighter and former British paratrooper wasn’t dressed for a summer day.
That second weekend in August, he wore a British desert camouflage uniform and combat boots. He carried a 35-pound pack on his back while running a full marathon — 26.2 miles — on a treadmill.
With breaks, it took eight hours. The breeze from several electric fans kept him cool. Taste of Edmonds crowds were invited to donate to Cretella’s one-man mission. He calls it the Brothers In Arms 1,000 Mile Challenge.
Cretella, 39, was featured in a Herald article last December after running the 2009 Seattle Marathon. That run, also in combat boots, kicked off his effort to raise awareness and money to help American and British military members injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. He asks that people donate to either the Wounded Warrior Project, which helps U.S. veterans with benefits counseling, family support, peer mentoring and other assistance, or to its British counterpart, Help for Heroes.
He said he has so far raised about $7,000 for the Wounded Warrior Project and about 3,000 British pounds for the other agency.
A year ago, Cretella expected to have logged 1,000 miles by the time he completes the 2010 Seattle Marathon on Sunday. “I was hoping, but I’m at 600 miles right now,” Cretella said Tuesday.
He doesn’t see that as falling short, but as a reason to continue the cause. “I’m going to keep going,” said Cretella, who may ask others to add miles to his Brothers In Arms effort.
A firefighter and paramedic in south Snohomish County for nine years, Cretella’s accent is a giveaway of his heritage. Raised in Lichfield, in England’s Midlands, he served from 1987 to 1997 in an airborne unit of the British Army.
Although British troops have been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, those wars came after Cretella’s service with the 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment. He spent three years on duty in Northern Ireland and took training tours to Gibraltar, Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Egypt.
What brought him here?
“The short version, I met an American girl. We met in England,” he said. “I was at the 10-year point in my career in the Army and decided to move on.”
Cretella moved to Tacoma, where he was trained as a paramedic. He still lives there with his wife, Clarissa. He has a son, 12, and a 16-year-old stepdaughter. His marathon training partner is often his dog, Murray, an Australian shepherd-border collie mix. “He’s a mutt. And he loves to run,” Cretella said.
In Sunday’s footrace, he’ll be joined by Fire District 1 firefighters Keith Sharp and Paul Murphy, and by his wife and a friend.
While the military kept him in shape, Cretella has stepped up his fitness regime in recent years. “Since leaving the Army, I gave up smoking and really got fit. I’ve done an Ironman Triathlon and multiple marathons,” he said.
The toughest part of a marathon is “the sheer distance,” he said. “Last year, getting to mile 20, I was thinking this is never going to end. But the Seattle Marathon didn’t feel as bad as the Tacoma City Marathon.”
Some of his mileage comes from an April trip when he and his wife completed Britain’s “three-peaks challenge.” That means scaling Britain’s three highest peaks in 24 hours. They are Ben Nevis in Scotland, Scarfell Pike just over the Scottish border in England, and Snowdon in Wales.
Cretella knows his fitness exploits can’t compare to the suffering of service men and women scarred by war. That’s why he wears that heavy pack and combat boots. They remind him of all the thousands hurt in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of all still serving.
At the Taste of Edmonds, Cretella said he was on the treadmill when a man approached him. The treadmill had a Wounded Warrior Project sign taped to it.
“He’s got that all-business attitude about him. I thought, ‘This guy is probably a military man.’ He had a very serious look on his face,” Cretella said. “He put in money and I said thank you. He looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘No. Thank you.’ ” Cretella then saw that the man had a prosthetic leg.
“It’s not just the stuff we can see. There’s research that traumatic brain injuries from repeated exposure to percussive forces in explosions are linked to post-traumatic stress disorder,” Cretella said.
“We’re seeing people come back from Iraq and Afghanistan with wounds that will be with them the rest of their lives,” he said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
How to help
To find out more about firefighter Paul Cretella’s Brothers in Arms 1,000 Mile Challenge, go to www.1000milechallenge.net.
To learn about the Wounded Warrior Project, go to www. woundedwarriorproject.org.
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