1/7/19, Black Forest, Colorado
- Caleb Forsberg
- Jan 19, 2019
- 6 min read

“Do you not know that the runners in a stadium all race, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win.” – 1 Corinthians 9:24
Exercise was never an enjoyable event for me as a kid. If anyone mentioned exercise my spirit was immediately drained. I remember my first time at a gym hopping onto an exercise bike and being gassed within the first five minutes. Running in specific was a workout I despised. It would take years for me to find a needed desire to challenge myself beyond what was comfortable.
Since I didn’t find much pleasure out of exercising, I often avoided it. My oldest brother, Garin, whom I look up to always pushed his physical limits in training whether it be track, football or the Army, so in an effort to spend more time with him exercise was suddenly tolerable. My first memory of working out with Garin is going to the local trail set up at Bicentennial Park in Oldsmar, Florida. We approximated the trail to be a bit longer than a 400-meter track. It wrapped around a small spot of densely plotted trees and some picnic benches. The trail also conveniently had pull-up bars and sit-up benches which I learned to appreciate. Garin created all our workouts that were too brutal for me at the time to imagine for myself. They consisted of sets of push-ups straight into pull-ups followed by sit-ups on a bench infested with spider webs. These three exercises became less dreadful the more sets we did, but after each round came a torture that my legs shook in fear of, one long full sprint from start to finish of the trail. Halfway around the track you could have guessed that we were attempting to fly the way our arms were flapping. I wished Garin would forget about the breath stealing sprint, and if I remember correctly, we didn’t always sprint at the end of the workout. I was grateful for these moments, but at the same time when we skipped the sprint it felt like the workout wasn’t finished; like I still had more to give.
Running is still a strenuous activity that I have to convince myself to do. I tell myself that I need to improve my running pace for ROTC or that I ate too many desserts the night before to not afford to go, but these items of convincing often fail at their task. Most of the time when I run, I only go about two miles, so I won’t feel like a bum the whole day. Giving a little extra was starting to become a thing of the past. I used to take Jesus’s words in Matthew 6:41 quite literally. He said, “And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two.” These words were a good motivator for my younger self to go an extra lap, but since Jesus wasn’t talking about exercise, I guess I let His words lose their special meaning to me.
My days of running in hot and humid Florida have now been exchanged for the thin air of Colorado Springs. The University of Montana issued four weeks to their students for winter break this year and you bet I spent most of it sleeping in, but for at least one day out of each weak I forced myself to go out on a run. The first day was a short one-mile run, so I could tell myself that I wasn’t a lazy bum, but I didn’t put in any real effort. The next two runs were both two-mile runs on top of packed snow and filled with dodging goose droppings. My last run before I was set to depart from Colorado back up to Montana, I chose to go to Black Forest.
Black Forest is a regional park in Colorado Springs with a 4.2-mile long trail that forms a square. I had hiked the trail a few days prior to explore the terrain. It’s loaded with small hills and at the time parts of it were covered with snow. I figured it couldn’t be too bad, especially with a good running soundtrack motivating me through the inclines. My optimism soon vanished. The moment the run began my legs felt like bricks and oxygen suddenly didn’t seem to exist anymore. Thoughts of regret were already beginning to fill my head. “If I feel this exhausted on the first mile how can I run four? Why I am doing this? I should be resting before a long road trip?”
My self-induced pain and regret about a mile and a half in were interrupted by a fascinating creature I have never before encountered, a tassel-eared squirrel. As a kid, I had a weird obsession with squirrels. I still remember a squirrel feeder being one of my favorite Christmas presents as a young child. Not much will force me to stop on a run even lack of breath, but this spotting was too good to pass up. Tassel-eared squirrels have long hairs that shoot up from their ears. That single visible trait makes them unique among squirrels. After about a minute or so of staring at one of God’s tree rats, it ran into the forest away from the trail leaving me roughly with two and a half more miles to finish.
The run and disappointment in myself continued as I focused back onto the dirt trail. Every bump in the ground seemed like another hill to my ever-growing burning calves. My physical disappointment that day reflected my spiritual disappointment throughout the week. I had been praying consistently the past week for God to give me new passion and desire for Him. Sudden bursts of excitement for God’s goodness would shoot up in me and flee just as fast with memories of past failures replacing them. My prayers felt lifeless and my desire dried up. The rest of the run did not differ much from this mindset or level of pain. I finished the run by slapping the back of my car as if crossing a finish line, yet the run didn’t feel finished.
In the dirt parking lot, I felt the urge to go around one more time. Immediately I refused the idea in my head, attempting to convince myself that there was no way I could do it again. I leaned against my car trying to catch my breath, but all the while the pull towards the trail head remained. I knew if I continued to stand outside of my car that there was a chance of me running again. I took action against another 4.2 mile run by taking a step toward the driver door of the car. I thought, “sorry God, I just don’t have anything left” grasping the handle, I remembered a day from sometime during my years in high school. While my brother was away from Florida, I went back to the same track at Bicentennial and did the same workouts including the dreadful sprint. The day popping back in my memory was like every other workout except after my sprint I felt like I had more to give. I needed to take one more lap. Fear of the pain and complacency with what I already had accomplished kept me from going one more time around. The rest of that week that decision haunted me. It haunted me to the point where I had to go back and complete that last lap. I couldn’t let fear and complacency take hold of me again, because this time I wouldn’t be able to go back. With shock that I was actually doing this, I ran towards the trail head.
I started out at the pace of a tortoise making his way to some crunchy vegetation to snack on that he would hopefully someday reach. There was no squirrel to deter me from focusing on the run this time. My Spotify playlist ran out of songs and began to play songs randomly that fit the general themes of my selections. The first song it played was “Strong Enough” by Matthew West. The song admits that we aren’t strong enough to handle our failures and battles, but God is. My next thought renewed in me a mindset God gave me at the start of my high school wrestling days, “God no matter how tired my soul becomes or how many times my legs fail me in the pursuit, I will not stop chasing after you until I have grabbed hold of the prize.” Then God renewed in me a new desire: the will to give everything to God, to keep asking, keep searching, keep praying, knowing that His faithful love will follow me all the days of my life. The courage to continue relying on God for my strength and to trust Him with my weaknesses came alive again in me, and so the run continues.
My pace picked up faster than it was during the first go-around. Something was springing up inside of me that this world just can’t seem to keep down. Roughly two miles left, and I was feeling stronger than the first six. I found something those last few miles of up and down trail. The belief that no matter how hard life seems to fall down on me, God will be there running right beside me. I ran up the last steepest hill in the final seconds of the jog straight up to my car, slapped the back while passing it, and then stopped to crouch down for a quick second. I stood back up and felt my legs buckling a tad as I walked towards my car. I climbed back in the car and thanked God for those last 4.2 miles that reminded me to believe again.
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