Mark Lauren is a certified Military Physical Training Specialist, Special Operations Combat Controller, triathlete, and competitive Thai boxer. He has effectively prepared over 700 trainees for the extreme demands of the most elite levels of the Special Operations community.
Mark started his career by being one of twelve to graduate the Pararescue & Combat Control Indoctrination Course, in a class that 94 trainees started.
As an experienced operator, during mission planning and execution of airfield seizures, combat search & rescue, close air support, and reconnaissance & surveillance missions, he trained troops capable of immediate deployment into areas of forward combat operation by military freefall, static-line, all-terrain vehicles, overland, scuba, and other amphibious means.
As their physical training instructor, he enabled highly productive training to take place despite space, time, and equipment restrictions, and completely restructured training programs, resulting in a 40% reduction of student injuries and failures. He was hand-picked by the Advanced Skills Training Commander to ensure commissioned Special Tactics candidates remained physically able to "lead from the front" throughout the trying two years of training. Mark personally tailored physical training programs and diets to suit the individual needs of candidates and monitored their progress, as well as totally revamping the courses' physical training programs.
Leading by example has always been Mark's credo, and for this and his physical prowess he was often chosen to lead officers through all physical training events during the extremely rigorous Special Tactics Officer Selection Course, which he did at a punishing pace.
Lauren's active duty and civilian employment has taken him all around the world to teach, including Iraq and Afghanistan. As a civilian, Mark Lauren spends much of his free time Thai boxing with Khanomtom Muay Thai in Tampa, FL and various Muay Thai gyms throughout Thailand. After training a total of 7 months in Thailand, over a period of three years, Lauren has managed to capture the FL IKF Middle Weight Championship and a professional belt in Phuket, Thailand.
Lauren broke, and still holds, the Pararescue/ Combat Control Indoctrination Course's long standing "underwater record" by swimming 133 meters, on one breath, subsurface, for 2 minutes and 23 seconds, until losing consciousness.
Contact Mark at Mark.Lauren@Rocketmail.com
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Joshua Clark is the author of Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in its Disaster Zone, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. He has contributed to several anthologies, including The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Best Of Lonely Planet Travel Writing (a collection of the greatest travel stories published over the last 10 years), State by State (in which he represented Louisiana), and New Orleans: What Can’t Be Lost. His work has also appeared in Consumer Affairs, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Poets & Writers, Louisiana Literature, Arkansas Delta Review, New Orleans Review, Oxford American, and Time Out: New York among many others. He runs the KARES writers relief fund and covered New Orleans in the hurricane's aftermath for Salon.com and National Public Radio.
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