HILL AIR FORCE BASE -- Instead of in the sky, two airmen from Hill Air Force Base are making names for themselves on the ground.
Senior Master Sgt. Rich Barber and 1st Lt. Tiffany Moore will both compete in the upcoming Air Force Marathon -- Barber in the full race and Moore in the half. The pair were selected by Air Force officials after competing in previous races.
The marathon will be Sept. 18 at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Ohio.
The marathon's registration list reached 10,000 runners Aug. 12, surpassing a record for the 14-year-old event.
Both Barber and Moore are relatively inexperienced distance runners, but have yielded positive results in a short length of time.
Barber has been running endurance races for only five years, but managed to qualify for the Boston Marathon this year with a time of three hours and 20 minutes in an earlier marathon.
"It was really just a curiosity that got me started," he said. "I was stationed in Italy and heard people talking about this marathon in Venice. It sounded like a cool event, so I thought I'd try it."
Moore, 25, ran her first half-marathon only a few months ago at Hill with a time of one hour and 48 minutes. She has an athletic background and was a javelin thrower for the Air Force Academy, but never ran distance runs before this year.
"I just did it to increase my stamina," she said. "I wasn't really thinking about anything else really. But it's turned out great."
Barber, 45, has been competing in marathons only since he turned 40. He said running has given him not only physical but mental strength, and he eventually would like to run ultra-marathon races with distances of 50 miles or more.
"Distance running isn't only physical," he said. "In fact, it's mostly mental. Your first goal is always to just finish the race, and sometimes toward the end that can get very hard."
Barber runs five days per week, averaging runs of five to seven miles with a long run of 18-21 miles on the weekends.
"I think once you really get into it, it's impossible not to develop a passion for it," he said.
"It's one of the few amateur events where you can go out and actually compete with professionals on the same course at the same time. That's exciting to me."
The Air Force Marathon course traverses historical places on Wright-Patterson, including the National Museum of the United States Air Force, the Air Force Institute of Technology, Headquarters Air Force Materiel Command, the Wright-Patterson AFB flight line, Huffman Prairie Flying Field, and the Wright Brothers Memorial Monument.
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