Run for God - Week 1 - Praising God in the Rain

It's time to play "catch up". Run for God started on Feb 10th and it's now March 6th.... I do want to take the time to blog about each class/ workouts because you guys can use this study as a tool to improve your physical, mental, and spiritual health! I'll bring you up to speed on the first four classes over the next week, and then I'll share each one after it happens.

To start things off, I guest blogged at my dear friend Sharita's blog. Check out the post here. This highlights our first night's run together. Yes we ran in the rain.

The first night was so exciting! Although we had lots of paperwork to do, we did a big overview of the class and focused on what the next 10ish weeks would hold for us. By this point, I had been prepping for 2 months, so my excitement level was through the roof. I had every detail of this first night down to the minute... then everyone started rolling in and well... I had to be flexible.

 I was so encouraged by the smiles, joy, and laughter of the 65 people in the class. Although we were 10 minutes late starting (did I mention I do not like (OK despise) being late - God is working on me...), we started by watching the Run for God promo video.  Then I shared my testimony. God is so good to give us peace in all circumstances. Sharing my heart and story so openly is scary, but God wrapped his loving arms around me and hopefully my story can bless others.

Here's a little introduction of my awesome friends who help out each week. Thank you guys!

So here's what we do in Run for God each Sunday.

We begin each Sunday with prayer and devotion. The devotions vary but serve as a link to parallel running with our Christian walk. We read a motivational story, focus in on key scriptures, and have a short discussion.

After the first 30 minutes, for the next 30 minutes, we discuss a running topic. From running gear to MP3 players to breathing and stretching, we'll discuss running topics that will make the runs more enjoyable and help us to avoid injury.

Then we run. My absoulute favorite question of the night was "What do we do about inclement weather?". Well... my response, "We run" :) Now altough I'm crazy, I would never put my fellow running friends in danger. We will not run in hail, a tornado, a hurricane, lighting, or any other act of God that could kill us. We will however brave the rain and cold to get our weekly runs in. We wouldn't stop our Christian walk because of a little trial, so we don't stop our physical journey because of a little rain. So each Sunday, we all leave the church for run. During the first few weeks, there is more walking than running, but eventually we will complete a 5k race - running the entire thing :)

So that's the Run for God overview/ first week in a nutshell. If you want to follow the workouts, the first week's workout is 5 min warm up, 60 second runs alternated with 90 second walks for 20 minutes, then a 5 min cool down/ stretch.