5k Sunday, Sara Hall Monday

5k Sunday, Sara Hall Monday

For the last few weeks I was training for a 5k. By this I mean I wanted to reduce my 5k time. I have ran many 5ks, 10ks, and attempted a marathon. So the distance of the 5k is no struggle for me. In high school I ran cross-country my senior year. My 5k times then floated around a 32 min race. My goal when I started running again was to complete a 5k without walking. So on my journey of running post high school began with this goal in mind. I started out just running here and there. I started to get serious when I started a run/walk program for a 5k. I hit this program head on for about 4-6 weeks. About two weeks after I stopped training I ran a 5k and completed my goal. I set a 5k pr of 30 min, without walking. At this point I took a long break because I was playing collegiate lacrosse. However that same semester I quit lacrosse not because my love for the game, but the coaches and me weren’t seeing eye-to-eye on a lot of issues. Leaving the game of lacrosse felt like a divorce, I loved the game but things were certainly hard. I also felt life was calling me to move onto my other dreams. For the next few months I was in rebellion toward anything requiring physical activity. When I quit I was weighing about 215 and my goal weight is still 200. However, during this four-month rebellion my weight increased to 230 lbs. Reality hit after looking in the mirror. That summer began running and running a lot. I have four brothers all of us runners, two of them the high school cross-country team, another that graduated that semester from college and the other graduated from high school. My first run was a 6mi run with Alex. This was the third hardest run I have ever done. This 6mi run took about 1hr and 30min, which is about a 13-14 min mile. Now I run a 10k in 58min, this is not even a year after my first 10k. I will go into more detail on my three hardest runs in another blog.

That summer all of us brothers completed a lot of running. Then the school year came around and my running circle had diminished and so did my drive to run. In order to get back into the flow of things again, my school had a 10k and I signed up for that and started training. I was training for about 2 weeks, after my second week I got a call from Alex asking if I wanted to do a marathon. Of course my response was yes but you’re an idiot for making me do this. The marathon was the day after Christmas, the Operation Jack Marathon. At this point he contacted my three other brothers and I assume they all had the same response. My parents told us to only do a half, but us Bridgeforth’s are hard headed and our mind was set on the marathon. My training changed from 6.2mi race to a 26.2mi race. My goal was to complete the MARATHON. The training started our excellent, however four weeks before the marathon I thought it would be a great idea to take a break, for the next four weeks I rand very very little. A week before the marathon my school went on Christmas break, I was at home and my brothers and me ran about 10mi that week. The marathon came and I ran 22 out of the 26.2 mi. I missed it. I missed it by only 4miles, I was disappointed in myself, more disappointed in my lack of training. After about a week of recovery and a week of light running I ran another 5k race. My time was 28:30. I decided that from now on that I am going train and complete my training for everything I set my mind to.

Upon returning to school I found a 5k that would help me secede in decreasing my 5k time. I was doing that plan for about 3 weeks but then I hit a bump, my running stopped due to lack of motivation and I was getting burnt out. Over this break I did a lot of thinking. I wanted to continue on this plan, and also continue to lift weights. My daily workout with running and lifting was about 2hrs, which was getting too much for me. So for the next two weeks I found and decided I would do CFE and the running plan as well as pushups on my off days of CFE. To begin this new start I decided to run a 5k race, which was this last Sunday. I was getting good turn over for about the first leg of the race, on the second leg of the race, my pace slowed down. I believed I finished in like 27:30 that is just a estimate, I wasn’t wearing a watch, I couldn’t find it the night before, and they race clock had my time wrong.

The highlight of my week was meeting Sara Hall! She was in town, at first I really didn’t want to go but I felt I was supposed to go. So I went with my roommate Derek. We all chatted for about like 10-15 min told her about my brothers, my goals, joked around a little bit. The thing that struck me the most was when she gave me her signature she also put John 10:10 on it. What does this verse say? I thought. John 10:10 says “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” This was the message I needed to here that day! You see I was at a point in my life were my I was stolen from and felt destroyed. This verse caused me to remember that in order to have life, I need to place it in him, Jesus. In order to achieve my goals as a runner, as a person, as a writer, as a student, I need to place God as the head and my plans second. So now when I run my primary goal is to, as it says in Luke 10:27 “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” What does this mean? I wish I had all the answers, I have an idea of what love is, but to love God with everything? I am still learning. This is my focus now I will work through what it means to love God. My second goal will be to love people as I love myself. Next week I hope to have more definitional meanings of what it to love God and others.

            My prayer is that I would be able to live this verse out in my life and that other people would live this verse out as well, that us Christians would be a light to the broken, but first would be able to love God with everything. I pray that You would help me be a light when there is a need. I pray that it would be Your will and not mine and that through me I would be able to reach whomever and whoever. Whatever is the call, I pray I will be ready.

            Thank for everything!

Your runner, Keith Bridgeforth

P.S. Tomorrow I will not be posting neither will I post on sundays.