REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. – At the U.S. Army Redstone Test Center, our Army Experimental Test Pilots conduct test flights during the week and IRONMAN competitions on the weekend! This November, four of our Army XPs competed in the Panama City Beach IRONMAN competition. What’s the IRONMAN? A triathlon race, that’s just a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride, 26.2-mile run. CW4 Brent Gregory, MAJ Katherine Houle, MAJ Frank Arnold, and MAJ Beau Carroll took part in the event, held annually in Florida. We caught up with our pilots for their thoughts on this recent accomplishment, asking them about the training involved, their thoughts on the race, and whether they will consider doing this again.
MAJ Katherine Houle: “We trained about a year for the event. We all did the Rocket City Marathon in December of 2024 and a Half-Ironman together in May 2025 in preparation, along with a handful of other smaller races. I, for one, learned that there's nothing more motivating than having ambitious friends and that the best type of fueling carbohydrate is sugar. While I'm sure we will all continue to compete in various races together, I don't have plans for another full distance IRONMAN but MAJ Frank Arnold has already committed to another in July 2026. He is insane.”
MAJ Beau Carroll: “I'll echo what Katherine said, Frank is insane...he signed up for that July 2026 race the day after our Ironman. The train up was a little over a year with several other races along the way. I could not have done it without a tight group of friends to hold me accountable and spend long weekend training. I don't know if I'll ever do another one again either, but we have a few shorter distance races on the books for the coming year.”
MAJ Frank Arnold: “Just adding to what they said; we had a few ~6-hour training sessions together and doing it with friends makes it a lot easier. I think our longest weekend was about a 6-hour bike ride one day and a 2.45-run on the other day. I think our longest training swim was about 2 miles in Lake Guntersville (Alabama). I learned that the event itself is not that hard, it's just having the discipline to train for 6 days a week. I also echo Katherine's comment about learning to love a LOT of sugar - I ate something like 3,000 calories of almost entirely carbohydrates during the IRONMAN. Regarding the questions of my sanity; I entered a raffle for Challenge Roth which is a full IRONMAN distance race in Roth, Germany. I didn't expect to get a spot... but I did, so it'll be another adventure.”
CW4 Brent Gregory: “I agree with what everyone said so far. It takes some level of mental fortitude to get through this. It’s pretty tough. I don’t know if I could have done this without the encouragement of my friends, I would like to thank my family for their level of support and the time away so I could train for this. This becomes a full-time job, on top of my real job and it took a lot of support from my wife and young kids and I really appreciated that. I actually would do this again, not sure how soon. I’m definitely open to the idea, especially if the right friends are motivated in doing this again.”
Great job by our teammates competing in this race, we look forward to cheering them on in the future!
The U.S. Army Redstone Test Center is located on Redstone Arsenal and is a subordinate command of the U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command. RTC provides technical expertise, state-of-the-art facilities, and capabilities to plan, conduct, analyze, and report the results of tests on missile and aviation systems, sensors, subsystems and components.
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