Fiona Milne Endures Injuries to Join Navy Run

Captain (Cadet Instructors Cadre) Fiona Milne was in the process of recovering from a work-related injury, as well as a hit and run, when a friend challenged her to sign up for the Virtual Navy Run, taking place earlier this summer. Read her inspirational story of running to give.

“I was at the point where I was angry with my slow recovery and constant pain so when a friend in jest suggested the Run I thought...why not...I already hurt and it supports those who are in greater need than I am,” she recalls.

Milne went straight for the 10 km distance. “Why start slow? I knew I could always switch to walking as I had a few years of training and trying out for the MARPAC Nijmegen Marching Team. The runs have not been fast or pretty but I am stubborn so I was getting them done,“ she says.

For Milne, the primary goal was to fundraise. “It is like donating blood....it is in us to give,” she says. “So fundraise I did. I asked friends and family to support me with this very worthwhile campaign.”

Milne set a modest goal of $400. “Once the donations surpassed my primary goal I dug in and asked friends and family again to help me make it to $1,000 for Soldier On, offering to run a second 10 km if the donations got to $1,000. Well I have great friends and family and we even exceed the $1,000 dollar
mark. So a second 10 km I did.”

Milne kept running all through May and June, counting the first day of the Virtual Navy Run
(VNR) as her first race. Her weekly goal was to run a minimum of 25 to 40 km. The route she would typically run for her 10 km included 6.75 km on dirt roads surrounded by heavy forest, vegetation and different types of animals.

“Many days I would see signs of black bears or the actual bears,” she recalls. Over the course of the two months, Milne was able to identify four different black bears. Then, a week before her last two runs for the VNR, there was an incident involving a very large black bear walking onto a property and killing a new fawn sleeping beside its mother.

While the event left her a little shaken, Milne didn’t let it stop her. She kept running, hoping that her two cans of bear spray, a fox forty whistle, and six bear bangers, would be enough to keep her safe.

“I decided to make ample noise in the worst and most known traveled areas,” she says. The ‘noise’ consisted of Milne singing songs from her Nijmegen song book. “That alone would scare anything!” she laughs.