Big Red Challenge brings a unique connecting the community with local veterans

The Big Red Challenge is not your typical Saturday morning event, it’s a 7k that which includes 21 different obstacles all along the course.

The Big Red Challenge raises money for organizations to help local veterans including a college scholarship.

“The first year we started we had 250 or 300 runners and we thought this thing is going to be tough to grow. But our ambition is to get 5,000 runners so every year we’re seeing that increase and we are seeing positive momentum around the race and it’s been a lot of fun,” Doug Cmelik executive director with the Big Red challenge said.

But the Big Red Challenge isn’t just for veterans, it’s for the whole community to help connect with those who served in the military.

“I’m not a veteran, a lot of people on our staff aren’t veterans so to get involved with veterans and see their struggles and help them through their struggles is really the mission we’re trying to accomplish,” Cmelik said.

For Nate Schimmel who started this event six years ago, as a veteran, this gave him an avenue to reach out and affect everyone in the community.

“I got two younger brothers serving all of the brother I’m serving with now and I just wanted to be able to do something and have an impact, I didn’t know what that impact was going to be but that’s been the discovery process of figuring out my purpose and what brings fulfillment and meaning to my life and giving back and serving others is huge component of that,” Schimmel said.

With the different obstacles, it creates adversity for all of the runners, creating an opportunity for everyone to challenge themselves.

“Everything beings with a challenge that kind of the start line for everything meaningful and fulfillment in life so it’s through the adversity the difficulty and getting outside of our comfort zone when we really find our true purpose in life,” scheme said.

If you would like to find out more information about the Big Red Challenge you can go to https://bigredchallenge.com/ to find out more.